“There aren’t two sides to facts.” The Plain Dealer explains the paper’s guiding principle. It’s truth.
On Saturday, The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer editor, Chris Quinn, wrote a letter to subscribers and readers. It was a “tough column to write.”
Our Trump reporting upsets some readers, but there aren’t two sides to facts: Letter from the Editor featured the kind of plain talk that should shame the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. I hold no illusions that you can shame cable TV “news-tertainment.”
The north star here is truth. We tell the truth, even when it offends some of the people who pay us for information.
The truth is that Donald Trump undermined faith in our elections in his false bid to retain the presidency. He sparked an insurrection intended to overthrow our government and keep himself in power. No president in our history has done worse…
Plenty of leaders today try to convince the masses we did not see what we saw, but our eyes don’t deceive…
There aren’t two sides to facts. People who say the earth is flat don’t get space on our platforms. If that offends them, so be it.
Jay Rosen, journalism professor and media critic at New York University, tipped me:
The Cleveland Plain Dealer has always served as a benchmark. Bravo. https://t.co/ldjukSmgtq pic.twitter.com/xYJnzyXy0j
— ???? Kathy E Gill ? ??mastodon.social/@kegill (@kegill) March 30, 2024
Imagine my lack of surprise that the column has not been picked up, according to Memeorandum (1:50 pm | 11:50 pm, eastern). I was not alone in noticing how Beltway media are failing the nation and its voters.
When Cleveland Plain Dealer editor gets it right and @kwelkernbc @MeetThePress fails.
"The facts involving Trump are crystal clear, and as news people, we cannot pretend otherwise, as unpopular as that might be with a segment of our readers. There aren’t two sides to facts." https://t.co/f0VW7VBmkP— Laura Chapin (@LauraChapin) March 31, 2024
There are still a LOT of news organizations and journalists on Twitter. The people sharing Jay’s post were mostly concerned citizens. Only a few journalists noted the remarkable line in the sand.
"All those soldiers who died in World War II were fighting against the kind of regime Trump wants to create on our soil" The Cleveland Plain Dealer's editor https://t.co/E77BfW0k2M @bastogne_war @AmericanLegion
— jean-paul Marthoz (@jpmarthoz) March 31, 2024
Quinn closes by referencing a recent New Yorker review of Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power by historian Timothy W. Ryback. “The Nazi leader didn’t seize power; he was given it,” per the subheadline.
Our nation does seem to be slipping down the same slide that Germany did in the 1930s. Maybe the collapse of government in the hands of a madman is inevitable, given how the media landscape has been corrupted by partisans, as it was in 1930s Germany.
Adam Gopnik writes that the book is “an aggressively specific chronicle of a single year, 1932.” That is when Hitler was elected.
The popular picture of the decline of the Weimar Republic—in which hyperinflation produced mass unemployment, which produced an unstoppable wave of fascism—is far from the truth. The hyperinflation had ended in 1923, and the period right afterward, in the mid-twenties, was, in Germany as elsewhere, golden…
Hitler’s hatred of parliamentary democracy, even more than his hatred of Jews, was central to his identity, Ryback emphasizes.
At Balloon Juice, WaterGirl called for mass subscriptions to The Plain Dealer. It’s only $1 for three months.
I’ve signed up and will support them through the end of the year. You should, too.
And send a link to everyone at your main news source.
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