While I think the last couple of months have added a few more twists and turns as we hurtle to the bottom of the roller coaster I spoke about in 2018, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t foresee how this ride would unfold.
For example, take the extent to which the media has seemed to silently accept the harassment by the current regime over the last seven months. Political journalists seemed flummoxed and unprepared for what is unfolding in this interregnum period, despite my urging last year that American media to learn from their African colleagues. My friend Joe Penney and I tried to warn of this eventuality.
No one took us up on our offer to provide an opportunity for this learning to happen. While we’ll have some respite from the institutionalized chaos that has left an indelible mark on all of us, the threats of violence in Georgia, Arizona, and Pennsylvania remind us that this is far from over.
As we hobble into 2021, It feels like we’re about to wake up from a dream within a dream. The last four years, coupled with the past ten months, have felt like a scene from Inception, where the primary function for bad actors has been to find a way to curtail media freedoms during multiple crises within crises. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker found that in May alone, law enforcement officers assaulted 190 journalists. In 2020 as a whole (at least up to now), 313 U.S. journalists have been attacked, again with many pointing to attacks by law enforcement officers.
Yet we’ve also seen international actors refuse to call what is happening in the U.S. an outright assault on journalistic freedoms. I watched a well-respected media observer from an international NGO claim on Twitter that assaults on journalists resulted from a “few bad actors” who weren’t adequately trained. This same observer is not shy about claiming that press freedom is under attack in Africa when similar assaults unfold on the continent.
While the double standard isn’t shocking to me and other Africans, to be honest, the extent to which the media field echoed this unimaginative response was astonishing. Despite watching Omar Jimenez, Kaitlin Rust, and James Dobson be assaulted on live TV, many in the profession were unwilling to call this systemic issue out for what it was: The State was trying to muzzle the press.
And don’t forget that one time America’s paper of record published an op-ed that called for the willful killing of protestors by the State in the name of “fostering a debate” — a debate about the killing of Black people during protests demanding recognition that lives like mine matter, have rights, and should be treated with respect and decency. These types of “debates,” Errin Haines reminds us, have a name.
After four years of bedlam, political journalists have not, as Burna Boy would say, taken the time to “Ja Ara E.” What we’ve seen over the past four years is American political journalism fumbling in the dark and failing to take a macro view of the chess game they were engaged in with the tate. They lost at every turn, often without even realizing that they were headed into a cul-de-sac. So here we are in December, and political journalists haven’t taken stock of what the last four years might mean for the next four.
At the same time, because the incoming administration is likely to be competently boring, the press will give the current occupant of the White House and his acolytes more airtime than they deserve. They will provide them with platforms to provide “the other side” of the day’s debates. Right-wing media will continue to draw political journalists into its atmosphere in much the same way as the main protagonist in Lady A’s “Hurt.”
Political journalism needs to wean itself from right-wing agitators and call this period what it is: an erosion of democracy and attempts to radicalize large chunks of the electorate. We’ve seen this playbook before. We know how, if left unchecked, it ends.
james Wahutu is an assistant professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University.
While I think the last couple of months have added a few more twists and turns as we hurtle to the bottom of the roller coaster I spoke about in 2018, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t foresee how this ride would unfold.
For example, take the extent to which the media has seemed to silently accept the harassment by the current regime over the last seven months. Political journalists seemed flummoxed and unprepared for what is unfolding in this interregnum period, despite my urging last year that American media to learn from their African colleagues. My friend Joe Penney and I tried to warn of this eventuality.
No one took us up on our offer to provide an opportunity for this learning to happen. While we’ll have some respite from the institutionalized chaos that has left an indelible mark on all of us, the threats of violence in Georgia, Arizona, and Pennsylvania remind us that this is far from over.
As we hobble into 2021, It feels like we’re about to wake up from a dream within a dream. The last four years, coupled with the past ten months, have felt like a scene from Inception, where the primary function for bad actors has been to find a way to curtail media freedoms during multiple crises within crises. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker found that in May alone, law enforcement officers assaulted 190 journalists. In 2020 as a whole (at least up to now), 313 U.S. journalists have been attacked, again with many pointing to attacks by law enforcement officers.
Yet we’ve also seen international actors refuse to call what is happening in the U.S. an outright assault on journalistic freedoms. I watched a well-respected media observer from an international NGO claim on Twitter that assaults on journalists resulted from a “few bad actors” who weren’t adequately trained. This same observer is not shy about claiming that press freedom is under attack in Africa when similar assaults unfold on the continent.
While the double standard isn’t shocking to me and other Africans, to be honest, the extent to which the media field echoed this unimaginative response was astonishing. Despite watching Omar Jimenez, Kaitlin Rust, and James Dobson be assaulted on live TV, many in the profession were unwilling to call this systemic issue out for what it was: The State was trying to muzzle the press.
And don’t forget that one time America’s paper of record published an op-ed that called for the willful killing of protestors by the State in the name of “fostering a debate” — a debate about the killing of Black people during protests demanding recognition that lives like mine matter, have rights, and should be treated with respect and decency. These types of “debates,” Errin Haines reminds us, have a name.
After four years of bedlam, political journalists have not, as Burna Boy would say, taken the time to “Ja Ara E.” What we’ve seen over the past four years is American political journalism fumbling in the dark and failing to take a macro view of the chess game they were engaged in with the tate. They lost at every turn, often without even realizing that they were headed into a cul-de-sac. So here we are in December, and political journalists haven’t taken stock of what the last four years might mean for the next four.
At the same time, because the incoming administration is likely to be competently boring, the press will give the current occupant of the White House and his acolytes more airtime than they deserve. They will provide them with platforms to provide “the other side” of the day’s debates. Right-wing media will continue to draw political journalists into its atmosphere in much the same way as the main protagonist in Lady A’s “Hurt.”
Political journalism needs to wean itself from right-wing agitators and call this period what it is: an erosion of democracy and attempts to radicalize large chunks of the electorate. We’ve seen this playbook before. We know how, if left unchecked, it ends.
james Wahutu is an assistant professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University.
John Ketchum More journalists of color become newsroom founders
Nabiha Syed Newsrooms quit their toxic relationships
John Saroff Covid sparks the growth of independent local news sites
Renée Kaplan Falling in love with your subscription
Megan McCarthy Readers embrace a low-information diet
Ben Werdmuller The web blooms again
Stefanie Murray and Anthony Advincula Expect to see more translations and non-English content
Rick Berke Virtual events are here to stay
Aaron Foley Diversity gains haven’t shown up in local news
Sara M. Watson Return of the RSS reader
Kate Myers My son will join every Zoom call in our industry
Janet Haven and Sam Hinds Is this an AI newsroom?
Christoph Mergerson Black Americans will demand more from journalism
Loretta Chao Open up the profession
Mark S. Luckie Newsrooms and streaming services get cozy
Burt Herman Journalists build post-Facebook digital communities
Kevin D. Grant Parachute journalism goes away for good
Francesco Zaffarano The year we ask the audience what it needs
Cindy Royal J-school grads maintain their optimism and adaptability
Danielle C. Belton A decimated media rededicates itself to truth
Celeste Headlee The rise of radical newsroom transparency
Mike Caulfield 2021’s misinformation will look a lot like 2020’s (and 2019’s, and…)
Ariane Bernard Going solo is still only a path for the few
Charo Henríquez A new path to leadership
Raney Aronson-Rath To get past information divides, we need to understand them first
Jean Friedman-Rudovsky and Cassie Haynes A shift from conversation to action
Jonas Kaiser Toward a wehrhafte journalism
Sumi Aggarwal News literacy programs aren’t child’s play
Natalie Meade Journalism enters rehab
Julia B. Chan and Kim Bui Millennials are ready to run things
Anna Nirmala Local news orgs grasp the urgency of community roots
Rodney Gibbs Zooming beyond talking heads
Ashton Lattimore Remote work helps level the playing field in an insular industry
Garance Franke-Ruta Rebundling content, rebuilding connections
Amara Aguilar Journalism schools emphasize listening
Tauhid Chappell and Mike Rispoli Defund the crime beat
Moreno Cruz Osório In Brazil, a push for pluralism
Pia Frey Building growth through tastemakers and their communities
Eric Nuzum Podcasting dodged a bullet in 2020, but 2021 will be harder
J. Siguru Wahutu Journalists still wrongly think the U.S. is different
Ståle Grut Network analysis enters the journalism toolbox
Linda Solomon Wood Canada steps up for journalism
Taylor Lorenz Journalists will learn influencing isn’t easy
Gordon Crovitz Common law will finally apply to the Internet
Sam Ford We’ll find better ways to archive our work
An Xiao Mina 2020 isn’t a black swan — it’s a yellow canary
Matt DeRienzo Citizen truth brigades steer us back toward reality
Victor Pickard The commercial era for local journalism is over
Joshua P. Darr Legislatures will tackle the local news crisis
Nikki Usher Don’t expect an antitrust dividend for the media
Beena Raghavendran Journalism gets fused with art
Robert Hernandez Data and shame
Bo Hee Kim Newsrooms create an intentional and collaborative culture
David Skok A pandemic-prompted wave of consolidation
Tamar Charney Public radio has a midlife crisis
Ray Soto The news gets spatial
Juleyka Lantigua The download, podcasting’s metric king, gets dethroned
Hossein Derakhshan Mass personalization of truth
Julia Angwin Show your (computational) work
Rachel Glickhouse Journalists will be kinder to each other — and to themselves
Nicholas Jackson Blogging is back, but better
Gabe Schneider Another year of empty promises on diversity
Kristen Muller Engaged journalism scales
Sue Cross A global consensus around the kind of news we need to save
Kerri Hoffman Protecting podcasting’s open ecosystem
Mike Ananny Toward better tech journalism
Ben Collins We need to learn how to talk to (and about) accidental conspiracists
Mandy Jenkins You build trust by helping your readers
Brandy Zadrozny Misinformation fatigue sets in
Zizi Papacharissi The year we rebuild the infrastructure of truth
Jennifer Brandel A sneak peak at power mapping, 2073’s top innovation
Mariano Blejman It’s time to challenge autocompleted journalism
Tim Carmody Spotify will make big waves in video
Shaydanay Urbani and Nancy Watzman Local collaboration is key to slowing misinformation
Steve Henn Has independent podcasting peaked?
Jim Friedlich A newspaper renaissance reached by stopping the presses
Marcus Mabry News orgs adapt to a post-Trump world (with Trump still in it)
Meredith D. Clark The year journalism starts paying reparations
Francesca Tripodi Don’t expect breaking up Google and Facebook to solve our information woes
Cory Bergman The year after a thousand earthquakes
Don Day Business first, journalism second
Michael W. Wagner Fractured democracy, fractured journalism
Alicia Bell and Simon Galperin Media reparations now
A.J. Bauer The year of MAGAcal thinking
Alyssa Zeisler Holistic medicine for journalism
Logan Jaffe History as a reporting tool
Masuma Ahuja We’ll remember how interconnected our world is
David Chavern Local video finally gets momentum
Zainab Khan From understanding to feeling
Andrew Donohue The rise of the democracy beat
Doris Truong Indigenous issues get long-overdue mainstream coverage
Nisha Chittal The year we stop pivoting
Edward Roussel Tech companies get aggressive in local
Kawandeep Virdee Goodbye, doomscroll
Rachel Schallom The rise of nonprofit journalism continues
Joanne McNeil Newsrooms push back against Ivy League cronyism
Parker Molloy The press will risk elevating a Shadow President Trump
Sarah Marshall The year audiences need extra cheer
Ernie Smith Entrepreneurship on rails
Cherian George Enter the lamb warriors
Mark Stenberg The rise of the journalist-influencer
Brian Moritz The year sports journalism changes for good
Tanya Cordrey Declining trust forces publishers to claim (or disclaim) values
Patrick Butler Covid-19 reporting has prepared us for cross-border collaboration
Sonali Prasad Making disaster journalism that cuts through the noise
Heidi Tworek A year of news mocktails
Samantha Ragland The year of journalists taking initiative
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen Stop pretending publishers are a united front
María Sánchez Díez Traffic will plummet — and it’ll be ok
Nonny de la Pena News reaches the third dimension
Whitney Phillips Facts are an insufficient response to falsehoods
Jesse Holcomb Genre erosion in nonprofit journalism
John Davidow Reflect and repent
Andrew Ramsammy Stop being polite and start getting real
José Zamora Walking the talk on diversity
C.W. Anderson Journalism changed under Trump — will it keep changing under Biden?
Laura E. Davis The focus turns to newsroom leaders for lasting change
Ryan Kellett The bundle gets bundled
Jeremy Gilbert Human-centered journalism
Bill Adair The future of fact-checking is all about structured data
Marie Shanahan Journalism schools stop perpetuating the status quo
Jacqué Palmer The rise of the plain-text email newsletter
Matt Skibinski Misinformation won’t stop unless we stop it
Delia Cai Subscriptions start working for the middle
Gonzalo del Peon Collaborations expand from newsrooms to the business side
Candis Callison Calling it a crisis isn’t enough (if it ever was)
Chase Davis The year we look beyond The Story
Nico Gendron Ask your readers to help build your products
Annie Rudd Newsrooms grow less comfortable with the “view from above”
Marissa Evans Putting community trauma into context
Jer Thorp Fewer pixels, more cardboard
Catalina Albeanu Publish less, listen more
Jody Brannon People won’t renew
Jessica Clark News becomes plural
Tonya Mosley True equity means ownership
Colleen Shalby The definition of good journalism shifts
Pablo Boczkowski Audiences have revolted. Will newsrooms adapt?
Talmon Joseph Smith The media rejects deficit hawkery
Astead W. Herndon The Trump-sized window of the media caring about race closes again
Richard Tofel Less on politics, more on how government works (or doesn’t)
Chicas Poderosas More voices mean better information
Sarah Stonbely Videoconferencing brings more geographic diversity
Anthony Nadler Journalism struggles to find a new model of legitimacy
John Garrett A surprisingly good year
Joni Deutsch Local arts and music make journalism more joyous
Alfred Hermida and Oscar Westlund The virus ups data journalism’s game
Benjamin Toff Beltway reporting gets normal again, for better and for worse
Hadjar Benmiloud Get representative, or die trying
M. Scott Havens Traditional pay TV will embrace the disruption
Errin Haines Let’s normalize women’s leadership