I’m sure you remember those two NYT headlines from the other day. I wrote about it, along with just about everyone else.
Margartet Sullivan, former ombudsman for the Times, weighs in on it and I think it’s fascinating that one of her former colleagues at the paper professed ignorance about why people were criticizing the paper for it:
Commenting on the second headline, the author Stuart Stevens, who writes about how democracies turn into autocracies, suggested: “These two headlines should be studied in journalism classes for decades.”
After I responded, “Not a bad idea,” a prominent voice from the New York Times chimed in. Michael Barbaro, who hosts The Daily podcast, posed a challenge to me: “Care to explain what the issue is with these headlines?”
Barbaro, whom I know from my days as public editor of the Times, is a smart guy, so I’m pretty sure he knows what the issue might be.
But sure, I’ll explain: The Kamala Harris headline is unnecessarily negative, over a story that probably doesn’t need to exist. Politicians, if they are skilled, do this all the time. They answer questions by trying to stay on message. They stay away from specifics that don’t serve their purpose.[…]
Sullivan points out that the Harris headline is really a reflection of the hysteria among the elite press that Harris hasn’t been giving them the direct attention to which they believe they are entitled. Boo hoo.
So, it’s a negative headline over a dubious story. By itself, it’s not really a huge deal. Another example of Big Journalism trying to find fault with Harris. More of an eye-roll, perhaps, than a journalistic mortal sin.
But juxtapose it with the Trump headline, which takes a hate-filled trope and treats it like some sort of lofty intellectual interest.
That headline, wrote Stevens, “could apply to an article about a Nobel prize winner in genetic studies.” […]
She notes that deep in the article itself they do address the fact that Trump is evoking “the ideology of eugenics promulgated by Nazis in Germany and white supremacists in the United States.” To me that’s the big story and it’s one that’s been out there since Trump came down the escalator in 2015. He really believes in this stuff and it’s never been fully explored even as he’s now not only talking about his own “good German blood” as he used to do but saying that migrants have inferior genes. This is right out of the Nazi playbook and aI would think that if the media made as big a del about this as they did Hillary Clinton’s emails, some Hispanic and Black Americans who think he’s good for the economy might wonder if maybe he’s talking about them — which he is.
But they don’t do that. Sullivan writes:
This is vile stuff. Cleaning it up so it sounds like an academic white paper is really not a responsible way to present what’s happening. What’s more, the adjacency of these stories suggests equivalence between a traditional democracy-supporting candidate and a would-be autocrat who stirs up grievance as a political ploy.[…]
She asked her graduate journalism students at Columbia to comment on the headlines. Without prompting, they didn’t have any problem understanding what the problem was.
She concludes:
In parting, I’ll share with you a post from historian and author Kevin Kruse about Trump.
Historians: He’s a fascist. Political scientists: He’s a fascist. His own aides: He’s a fascist. The NYT: He shows a wistful longing for a bygone era of global politics.
That, in essence, is the issue with these headlines.
Here’s a little reminder of the NY Times coverage of an earlier fascist:
On November 21, 1922, the New York Times published its very first article about Adolf Hitler. It’s an incredible read — especially its assertion that “Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so violent or genuine as it sounded.” This attitude was, apparently, widespread among Germans at the time; many of them saw Hitler’s anti-Semitism as a ploy for votes among the German masses.
But the really extraordinary part of the article is the three paragraphs on anti-Semitism. Brown acknowledges Hitler’s vicious anti-Semitism as the core of Hitler’s appeal — and notes the terrified Jewish community was fleeing from him — but goes on to dismiss it as a play to satiate the rubes (bolding mine):
He is credibly credited with being actuated by lofty, unselfish patriotism. He probably does not know himself just what he wants to accomplish. The keynote of his propaganda in speaking and writing is violent anti-Semitism. His followers are nicknamed the “Hakenkreuzler.” So violent are Hitler’s fulminations against the Jews that a number of prominent Jewish citizens are reported to have sought safe asylums in the Bavarian highlands, easily reached by fast motor cars, whence they could hurry their women and children when forewarned of an anti-Semitic St. Bartholomew’s night.
But several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followers and keep them aroused, enthusiastic, and in line for the time when his organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes.
A sophisticated politician credited Hitler with peculiar political cleverness for laying emphasis and over-emphasis on anti-Semitism, saying: “You can’t expect the masses to understand or appreciate your finer real aims. You must feed the masses with cruder morsels and ideas like anti-Semitism. It would be politically all wrong to tell them the truth about where you really are leading them.”
Now, Brown’s sources in all likelihood did tell him that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was for show. That was a popular opinion during Nazism’s early days. But that speaks to how unprepared polite German society was for a movement as sincerely, radically violent as Hitler’s to take power.
Ten years later:
How’d that work out for us?
Ugh: