Paging Chuck Todd... CUNY Graduate School of Journalism professor Jeff Jarvis with some sage advice for the media on this Sunday's Up with David Gura. Sadly, it's going to fall on deaf ears, far too many of which are employed by the same network he made an appearance on this morning.
Jarvis was asked about his post at Buzz Machine, discussing Beto O’Rourke’s response to the the reporter who asked him if there was anything Trump could do to make things better following the mass shootings last week, one of which was in O’Rourke’s home town of El Paso. Jarvis encouraged everyone to watch Eddie Glaude's righteous rant on Nicolle Wallace's show last Tuesday, and took The New York Times to task for their ridiculous “Trump Urges Unity vs. Racism” headline which they later retracted.
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And my definition of journalism now is to convene communities in respectful, informed and productive conversation. We have to look at what is stopping us from doing that. And I think we need investigators, yes, and we also need educators.
The best journalism... the story of our times is racism. It's been the story for a century, but we're finally realizing it today. And the best journalism I've seen in the last week on that story, was on this network, Eddie Glaude, Jr. on Nicolle Wallace's show on Tuesday. That clip has been everywhere, and if you haven't watched it, please people, watch it.
And what he does is educate. And The New York Times turns around and has a ridiculous headline about --
GURA: I've got it right here. Trump vs. unity vs. racism. Second edition, assailing hate but not guns.
JARVIS: Which... how does that possibly inform the electorate? How does that possibly tell anything about what the country is today? We need investigators. We need educators and we also probably need group therapists, because this country is screwed up and we've got to figure out how to bring people together and build bridges among communities.
Validating the fact that we are led by a racist in this country, you bet your rear end. Of course we have to do that. We have to call it what it is. Use the word. It's not racially tinged, it's racist. It's not fabricating. It's lies. And if we're not honest and truthful with the public we serve, how do we expect to get anywhere?
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We have a third of this country in mass delusion. We have to call on other disciplines to understand how to deal with this. […] This is a bigger problem than what we've done in the past in journalism which is just repeating words and being a stenographer.
