Forums

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Who does this remind you of?

Biden campaign letter to the NYT, reported here:

In recent years the Times has become a leading perpetrator of one of the most corrosive trends in modern journalism—“savvy” reporting that prizes the identification of disingenuous political tactics at the expense of focusing on the facts that voters need to know. This unfortunate tendency was visible in the days the scandal that has led Trump to the brink of impeachment broke, as the Times rehashed this hateful and disproven conspiracy theory as though it hadn’t been put to bed. Two of our staff members, when discussing the Trump news with a pair of Times reporters, were stopped as they tried to outline how disproven the smear Trump wanted to pressure Ukraine into fomenting was, being told that this piece wasn’t about the facts of what happened and instead had to do with trying to forecast how it might play in the Democratic primary.

From that article:

New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen has, for several years now, alluded to a reporting paradigm he calls “the savvy” or “savviness.” He explained the concept in a 2011 speech:

In politics, our journalists believe, it is better to be savvy than it is to be honest or correct on the facts. It’s better to be savvy than it is to be just, good, fair, decent, strictly lawful, civilized, sincere, thoughtful or humane. Savviness is what journalists admire in others. Savvy is what they themselves dearly wish to be. (And to be unsavvy is far worse than being wrong.)

Savviness is that quality of being shrewd, practical, hyper-informed, perceptive, ironic, “with it,” and unsentimental in all things political. And what is the truest mark of savviness? Winning, of course! Or knowing who the winners are.

Read the whole thing, as they say.