I Scream, You Scream, but When Stephen A. Smith Screams, He Makes $40M A Year: Understanding how our “hot-take culture” took hold of us

This is perhaps the most informative and honest look at what journalism has become and why it has become more and more difficult to have students do quality journalism when screaming stupid thoughts at other people is a much more lucrative option:

Joon Lee’s piece tapped into a few things that most of us already knew:

Our society has gotten less civil and but exponentially louder and less informed.
It’s cheaper and more lucrative to have two idiots screaming at each other on TV than it is to invest in quality journalism based on clarity an nuance.
If something works at a small level, people will inevitably increase the frequency and intensity of it until the speakers essentially go to 11.

Beyond that, however, here were some really fascinating things (and I use “fascinating” to cover over a multitude of emotional states I had watching this, ranging from “feeling informed” to “wanted to vomit through my ears.”):

The walk through the history of how ESPN built this culture of hot takes showcased the way in which the spike in the ratings from Skip Bayless screaming at people eventually moved us from debate to hot take.
The honesty Lee provides about his experiences in being a guest on one of these shows. After Stephen A. Smith made some pretty racist comments about Shohei Ohtani not speaking English, Lee got asked to step in and present some information about the impact of Ohtani and racism on the Asian American community. His points were great, but what people on social media most commented on was how he got Smith, who never apologizes for anything, to apologize. It was then he realized the content was secondary to the battle.
Lee was also honest about how he felt the pull of the hot-take gig, in that it brought him more into the public eye, helped spike up his social media presence, led to raises at work and other such things. In short, he understood why people would do this, even as he wasn’t really that fond of doing it.
Stephen A. Smith’s overall earnings was reported here to be about $40 million per year, which helped me understand why every sports kid I teach wants to be like him. I also realized I should have started screaming at people for no real reason much, much earlier in my life…
How sports set the table for this, but how it has now poisoned almost every area of our lives, including politics. I remember when Biden snapped at Trump at one of their Election 2020 debates and suddenly, “Will You Shut Up, Man?” T-shirts were for sale before the event ended. I’ve yet to see a nuanced policy discussion show up on a fridge magnet or bumper sticker, but still…

DISCUSSION STARTER: The video gives us a lot of depth and context as to the how and why of this situation, but it doesn’t really provide a lot of relief for those of us hoping we can somehow get out of this mess.

I guess the questions to get the discussion going could include, “Should we worry about this at all, given that people seem to like this stuff?” and “If we need to stop it, how can we get people addicted to better content than what amounts to a mix between a schoolyard punch-fest and cockfighting?”

A Lot at Steak: How U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s AI Blunder Led to Marketing Gold

THE LEAD: Secretary of Education Linda McMahon managed to confuse AI (artificial intelligence) with A.1. (steak sauce) while delivering her comments at the ASU+GSV Summit last week.

The gaffe became fodder for all sorts of internet humor, but company responsible for making the condiment saw an awesome opportunity and took full advantage of the mistake:

A.1. Sauce capitalized on McMahon’s blunder by posting an Instagram post on their verified account saying, “You heard her. Every school should have access to A.1.”

“Agree, best to start them early,” the picture attached to the post reads.

Other Instagram users loved the response from the Kraft Heinz-owned brand. One user even commented, “I will be buying a bottle or two because of this post.”

KRAFT-ING MARKETING GOLD AGAIN: Kraft Heinz, which markets A.1., has a decent track record of grabbing a cultural moment and running with it. The company took advantage of the “Barbenheimer” explosion by introducing a pink “Barbie-cue” sauce and has also linked a ranch dressing to Taylor Swift. In each case, the company drew attention to its brand, garnered some nice free media publicity and avoided the kinds of gaffes often associated with trying to ride a trend.

Despite the random uncertainty in the market these days, the stock closed up on Friday and has shown a gain from $27.60 on April 9 to $29.33 on Friday. Although that time frame corresponds with the comments McMahon made about A.1., it’s a bit simplistic to say the gains were solely connected to that mistake.

In its rating of best food stocks to buy according to billionaires, Insider Monkey rated Kraft Heinz at the top of the list for a number of reasons, including global supply chain and reliance on AI (not A.1.) for keeping factories humming. Still, people are saying they’re buying a bottle or two of the steak sauce as a result of the gaffe:

So far, A.1.’s loyal fans seem to be in support of its “new sauce.”

“My husband wants a bottle for his desk,” one commenter wrote under the brand’s post. “He teaches middle school, at least until they replace him with A.1.”

BLOG FLASHBACK: Kraft Heinz isn’t alone in taking advantage of dumb situation with some marketing genius. As we noted back in 2018, Country Time Lemonade drew a lot of attention after it created its “Legal Ade” defense fund for kids who had been fined for not having a business permit to run their lemonade stands.

Like the A.1. effort, this worked because it was on the right side of the argument, made fun of the utterly ridiculous and didn’t run a significant risk of hurting its brand with this maneuver.

Other organizations tend not to be as lucky when they jumped in on trending hashtags or didn’t think about potential blow back before entering the larger discussion.

DISCUSSION TIME: What do you think Kraft Heinz should do next? Ride the wave? Leave it alone? Try something else? Also, what other marketing maneuvers have you seen that tried to connect with a trend? Did they succeed or fail in your eyes? Why?

It’s all fun and games until someone sues you for being an idiot: Pat McAfee Edition

ESPN forced to put out 'don't sue us' disclaimer as Pat McAfee show launches on live TV as NFL icon apologizes at start | The US Sun

The disclaimer on the front of Pat McAfee’s show.

THE LEAD: Pat McAfee, former NFL punter and current podcast maven, amplified an internet rumor on his show about Ole Miss quarterback Jaxon Dart and his girlfriend, Mary Kate Cornett. The unsupported allegation was that the 18-year-old freshman student was involved in a “triangle” of sexual relations with Dart and Dart’s father.

After suffering weeks of abuse, threats and other unpleasantness via the Online Idiot Brigade of Dude-Bros, Cornett plans to sue for defamation:

Now she is looking to hold accountable those who contributed to ruining her life, with McAfee and his network, ESPN, clearly in her sights.

“I’m not a public figure that you can go talk about on your show to get more views,” Cornett said on NBC.

BACKGROUND: McAfee is one of several larger “main-stream” media outlets that amplified this rumor. Barstool Sports folks promoted the rumor, along with a meme coin of Cornett. Former NFL player Antonio Brown posted a meme about the rumor. And this doesn’t count the number of other yahoos and local “shock-jock” idiots who did their own hot takes on the topic.

As a result, Cornett’s life has become a literal living hell:

As the rumor spread, Cornett removed her name from outside her dorm room, but she still had vile messages slipped under her door. Campus police told her she was a target, and she moved into emergency housing and switched to online courses.

Houston police showed up to her mother’s house, guns drawn, in the early hours of Feb. 27, in an apparent instance of “swatting” – when someone falsely reports a crime in hopes of dispatching emergency responders to a residence. According to security camera footage and a police report reviewed by The Athletic, the homicide division responded to the call.

After her phone number was posted online, Cornett’s voicemail was filled with degrading messages. In one, a man laughs as he says that she’s been a “naughty girl” and cheerfully asks her to give him a call. Another male caller says that he has a son, too, in case she’s interested. Several people texted her obscene messages, calling her a “whore” and a “slut” and advised her to kill herself.

UNDERSTANDING THE LAW: I talked to a couple Legal Eagle friends about this and they’re pretty much in agreement that anything from a defamation suit to an invasion of privacy case would likely tilt in Cornett’s favor. The key things to consider are this:

Cornett is not a public figure by any reasonable definition of the term, which means defamation is easier to prove. Yes, she’s dating a high-profile college athlete in the days of NIL money, but that doesn’t make her fair game. If she were a high-profile athlete or if she were promoting her personal brand of something or other online with a “brought to you by Jaxon Dart’s girlfriend,” McAfee’s actions would remain despicable, but the law could be a bit murkier. As a private individual, the standard she has to prove is negligence, not actual malice.
The rumor and the people spreading it (especially McAfee) have offered no proof for the allegations they are making about Cornett. As far as anyone can tell, this started out as a random post on YikYak and just kind of spread all over the place. Truth is one of the best “silver bullet” defenses against libel, which is why accuracy is so vital in journalism. If you accuse your university president of running a cocaine ring out of the basement of the student union, and you can prove it, you’re likely up for a Pulitzer, as opposed to a multi-million-dollar legal bill.
McAfee is not protected by the word “allegedly,” despite him and his panel of merry men slathering it about like mayo on a BLT. As we’ve discussed before, “allegedly” offers no legal protection.
McAfee is also not protected by his stupid disclaimer about it just being a joke-y show with a bunch of “stooges” just throwing bull around. If simple disclaimers like that worked, I’d put one on the back of Amy’s truck that says, “Disclaimer: I have a lead foot and a total disregard for my speedometer, so don’t pull me over to ticket me. I won’t change my behavior.”
Hyperbole doesn’t protect him either. The concept of hyperbole is that something has to be so outlandish that no reasonable person would believe it to be true. That’s why the Flynt v. Falwell case ended up in the favor of the porn producer, not the televangelist.

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: The first and most obvious thought is that Pat McAfee should know better than to do this. He’s 37 years old, so he’s been a grown-up for quite some time. He graduated with a communications degree from West Virginia University, so it’s likely he ran into some course at some point about what is and isn’t legal to say on air. He’s got a listener base of nearly 3 million people, so he should know that anything he says has a real chance to have a significant impact.

Even if he were none of those things, basic human decency plus the ability to observe the carnage that has befallen this poor kid* should have clued him in that it’s time to call off the dogs and apologize about this. (*Yes, the law considers her an adult, but she’s still basically a kid. Tell me you felt like a fully formed adult ready to deal with the world at large and I’ll be hard-pressed to believe you.)

Life as a teenager is ridiculously hard as it is. People are angry, petty and stupid. You feel lost and unable to control anything. Your mind races and wanders all at the same time as you try to figure things out for yourself, as every adult around you seems to be asking, “So, what are you going to do next?”

That doesn’t even account for the way in which social media has amplified the “Mean Girls” aspects of life, in which rumors spread more quickly, people get more vitriolic and anxiety can become amplified many times over. The crap teens say to their peers on a daily basis on social media channels could peel paint and give a truck driver the vapors. Now, imagine that it’s the entire world seemingly aligning against you for no good reason other than some chucklehead thought it would be funny to tell people you slept with someone’s dad.

I can’t imagine a way out. Actually, I can and others have as well, which is devastating beyond belief.

I$ Ca$h $peech? Elon Musk has a couple million thoughts on that…

Make It Rain Money GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY
An artistic rendering of Elon Musk’s rally in Green Bay on Sunday…

THE LEAD: Elon Musk handed out two $1 million checks Sunday as part of his efforts to rally voters for Brad Schimel in the Wisconsin State Supreme Court race.

Musk apparently decided that dumping $20 million in ad money into my home state’s Supreme Court Election wasn’t doing enough, so he decided to start handing out money to potential voters like it was parade candy.

Aside from offering people $100 each to sign a petition against “activist judges” (a thinly veiled swipe at the Democrat-backed candidate Susan Crawford), he took it a step further in offering the big cash prizes to a couple Wisconsin voters.

State AG Josh Kaul filed suit in an attempt to block this move, even as Musk was reshaping his offer:

Kaul is asking a Madison-based state appeals court to issue an order barring Musk from handing out $1 million checks to voters ahead of a planned Sunday event in Green Bay. The Democratic Attorney General first sought the ruling from a Columbia County judge who declined to act before Sunday, according to Kaul.

In a since-deleted post on X, Musk said he would hold an event Sunday in Wisconsin and hand out $1 million checks to voters “in appreciation for you taking the time to vote.”

But after election experts and Democrats raised questions about whether the offer violated the state’s election bribery laws, Musk deleted the post and said he would instead be handing over the checks to two people who would serve as spokespeople for his “Petition In Opposition To Activist Judges.” The new post also no longer said attendance would be limited “to those who have voted in the Supreme Court election,” as the original post had stated.

The appeals court rejected Kaul’s efforts on Saturday, noting that he hadn’t fully supported his application properly, so the judges denied his request. The Supreme Court also shot down his request.

BASIC BACKGROUND ON THE RACE: If you live outside of Wisconsin and have a limited interest in politics, you probably never heard of Susan Crawford or Brad Schimel. If you live in the state of Wisconsin, you probably know their names better than you know the name of your current pets.

(It’s also likely that you think all the Supreme Court will do is rule on when to set pedophiles free, given that seemed to be the gist of every attack ad on both sides of this.)

Like most court races, the Wisconsin Supreme Court election is supposed to be a non-partisan affair. As has become the case everywhere, that’s not entirely true, as both Republicans and Democrats basically pick sides and pour time, effort and cash into getting a candidate more to their liking onto the court.

Unlike most other statewide races in the country, people all over the place have taken a vested interest in whether Crawford or Schimel wins. According to a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel analysis, people from all 50 states have dumped a record amount of cash into this election. The Brennan Center reported last week that the two campaigns and outside groups have spent more than $73 million on the race, which doesn’t account for whatever was spent since March 24.

The main reason is that whoever ends up winning will tilt the “non-partisan” court 4-3 toward a more liberal or more conservative side of the spectrum. With questions about gerrymandered state maps, women’s rights to bodily autonomy, state workers’ union rights, gun regulations and more likely coming down the road to the Supreme Seven, this race is seen as a really big deal for Wisconsin and beyond.

BASIC BACKGROUND ON FINANCIAL SPEECH AND ELECTIONS: In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 in the Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission case that outside interest groups could spend as much money as they wanted to influence the outcome of elections via messaging of all kinds.

According to the Brennan Center, this led to the creation of giant “Super PACs” (political action committees) that wealthy interests could use basically steer election outcomes:

In other words, super PACs are not bound by spending limits on what they can collect or spend. Additionally, super PACs are required to disclose their donors, but those donors can include dark money groups, which make the original source of the donations unclear. And while super PACs are technically prohibited from working directly with candidates, weak rules that are supposed to enforce this separation have often proven ineffective.

The court in the Citizens United decision did note, however, that the law could limit money in politics if it was clear that the money was being used in a form of outright bribery, or “quid pro quo corruption.” So, in short, Rich Dude/Dudette X can drop $500 billion into ads, mailers, events, social media posts and people wearing sandwich boards promoting a candidate for the Omro Dog Catcher Election, but they can’t hand $100 bills to voters outside a polling place for the purpose of buying their votes.

THE SMELL OF MUSK: Elon’s offers are clearly outside of the norm of what we’ve seen in politics to date (at least in recent years). To be fair, he’s giving out cash to people who sign a pledge that has no legally binding requirements and isn’t capable of creating any legally binding action if he reaches a certain number of signatures. In fact, people could take his money, use it to print up a boat load of Susan Crawford lawn signs and move on if they chose.

He also initially tried to skirt the rules meant to tamp down on bribery by making the two $1 million offers a kind of Publishers Clearinghouse Giveaway of sorts. His offer this time was for those folks who helped get the signature, which again, have no actual value in the broader sense of this election, so offering money for them is kind of like when the tooth fairy would pony up cash for your baby incisors.

What becomes a concern here is the psychological impact of reinforcing desired behaviors. The approach Musk is taking to get people to lean toward his liking is like Pavlov’s dogs, Skinner’s pigeons and Bandura’s bobo dolls all in one. Although the law has outlined strict rules for what is and isn’t bribery, psychological researchers have found the line between bribery and reinforcement to be a little fuzzier.

DISCUSSION STARTER: Where do you stand when it comes to the ideas outlined in the articles linked throughout here, particularly as they relate to the offering of money to complete a task like the petition Musk wanted people to sign? Is this a harmless stunt, a bribery attempt to undermine electoral legitimacy or something in between? Explain what you think and why and see if anyone can change your mind.

You are always in the public eye, so it pays to keep that in mind (a.k.a. we used to call it the World Wide Web for a reason)

This ensemble is from the “Dress to fire people” line…

THE LEAD (Part I): Being a social media influencer can take a lot of work, but multitasking between firing people as part of the Office of Personnel Management and showcasing clothing options that collectively cost more than my first car tends to lead to problems:

On the day O.P.M. sent a memo to all federal department and agency heads asking for lists of underperforming employees to terminate, she flaunted a “work look” that included a purple skirt that her followers could also purchase, retailing at $475. She would get a commission if they used her link.

The spokeswoman, McLaurine Pinover, is not the only member of the Trump administration to have used her federal office to promote outside business interests, but former agency officials and ethics watchdogs say that the timing and content of the videos were both unlawful and especially tone-deaf.

I wonder how they tracked her down after she scribble out her… Oh… Yeah…

THE LEAD (Part II): Being a racist jerk tends to lead to a lot of backlash, particularly when you leave enough clues for people to find you.

On March 2, Stephanie Lovins, while dining at Cazuelas Mexican Cantina in Columbus, Ohio, left a message for Ricardo, a U.S. citizen serving her.

In the signature section of her receipt, Lovins wrote: “I hope Trump deports you,” followed by “Zero. You suck.” The incident occurred after Lovins grew upset over the restaurant’s “one coupon per table” policy.

A restaurant employee who found the receipt shared a photo on social media, and it quickly went viral, provoking widespread condemnation and calls for Lovins’ termination.

DIGITALLY DUMB: In both cases, the people involved tried to wiggle their way out of this situation. In Pinover’s case, she did the “Ugh… like, why are you making such a big deal about this?” thing, arguing that she didn’t make any money and trying to garner sympathy for her influencer attempts:

In a statement, Ms. Pinover said she never made any money from the fashion videos.

“While I was battling breast cancer as a new mom, I felt so unlike myself. I turned to social media shortly after as a personal outlet,” she wrote. “I never made any income and with only about 800 followers, I’m surprised the so-called ‘newspaper of record’ finds this newsworthy. My focus remains on serving the American people at O.P.M.”

In the case of Lovins, she went with what I call the “Shaggy Defense” when confronted:

Lovins initially denied any involvement, claiming on social media that her credit card had been lost or stolen and that someone else had used it.

“My credit card was lost/stolen, and someone attempted to use it. Thanks for the notifications! This has been reported through my bank,” she wrote on Facebook.

“Thank you for all the recent notifications of scammers and profile hackers! I recently discovered a lost/missing credit card and an attempted use/purchase. I appreciate your patience while I manage the situation,” she wrote in a post on LinkedIn….

However, this was discovered to be a false statement after the restaurant reviewed CCTV footage and confirmed that she was inside the restaurant, leading to her termination.

DOCTOR OF PAPER FLASHBACK: Two things came to mind in reading these stories. First, it was the idea that anything we do nowadays is private is almost quaint, but particularly so when you actively jump online.

I remember in the early ’00s when I had a student who wrote a blog post/diatribe about a conservative student on our campus. When that conservative kid saw the post, she put out the Bat Signal to conservative websites and media outlets, thus leading to this exchange between me and my student:

HER: This isn’t fair! I’m getting attacked by all these people who she shared the piece with.

ME: What do you mean it’s not fair? You published a hit piece on her, so she’s telling people to tell you what they think about it.

HER: But that wasn’t supposed to be for her! It was only for my friends! It was supposed to be private!

ME: What part of the “WORLD WIDE WEB” do you not understand?

Second, I had a similar situation where we were going to launch the reporting book and the folks at Sage wanted me to do a whole new social media profile:

ME: I’ve got a Twitter account and I’ve got a ton of followers already. Why should I delete that and do a different one?

EDITOR: Vince, do you remember what you ate for lunch yesterday?

ME: Um… No…

EDITOR: How about last week Tuesday?

ME: Not a clue…

EDITOR: Right. So you’ve been on Twitter for about 10 years at this point… How many of those tweets are things you remember well and are totally proud of?

ME: (Quietly setting fire to every digital account and device I ever owned…)

To be fair, I’m sure I wasn’t asking for money or to deport a server, but I was extremely upset about the Cubs stealing the 2016 World Series from my Cleveland squad, so I’m sure I didn’t cover myself in glory there…

BLOG FLASHBACK: We’ve had a number of these cases in which people behaving badly ended up getting shared online, leading to terrible outcomes.

There was the college student who didn’t think anyone would share her “Finsta” tirade about Black people. We also had the kid at UW-Madison, who apparently thought her “private thoughts” on forcing the ghosts of Black people to “pick cotton” wasn’t going to go viral. Then, there was the kid who had a swastika flag and a whiteboard full of slurs getting outed at UW-Oshkosh.

I’m sure there were more, but I started getting depressed, so let’s just leave it at those and say these are not rare occurrences.

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: Given that the sheer tonnage of time people spend online each day could stun a team of oxen in its tracks, there are a couple key takeaways for folks that bear repeating:

Nothing is “just” anything anymore: If you’re thinking you “just” sent that photo to a friend or you “just” made that less-than-savory joke to your private Facebook friends or you “just” acted like a dipstick in public once, welcome to your reality check.

Dad used to tell me stories about guys at work who would tell off-color jokes or poke fun at each other in ways that boggle my mind. I don’t know if it’s so much that these things were terrible or if now I’m just so attuned to the crap storm that could come from those jokes or putdowns that freak me out.

I like to think that it’s half of a piece of each, in that more people had thicker skin while fewer people were perpetually offended and that we have evolved to prevent some truly unsavory behavior in the work environment.

Either way, we are clearly beyond getting free passes in life with the justification of, “C’mon, it was just…”

Everything is public: I don’t like that everything I do is public these days or that someone could decide, “Hey, it’s F— with Filak Time!” and look for a McDonald’s receipt I was writing stupid crap on back in 1998 or something. However, that’s the field I’m in and that’s the reality of our surroundings.

You can avoid a lot of this by not being online as much or not sharing as much stuff online, but for digital natives, media operatives and anyone under the age of 60 who wants to remain part of broader society, that’s a tough ask.

This is why paranoia is my best friend, why I try to count to 10 before I write anything out of anger and I always imagine the headline in the Advance-Titan of “UWO professor suspended for (Dumb thing I’m thinking about doing)” before I do anything.

It doesn’t solve everything, but it does tend to keep me more centered than I would otherwise be.

Know the rules: This more applies to the first case, as opposed to the second one, although understanding “one coupon per table” before losing your mind on a server has a tangential connection here.

When social media first emerged, a lot of people running organizations were in their 50s and 60s and they knew two things about it: 1) They didn’t know what it was or how it worked and 2) They wanted to use it somehow for the betterment of their organization.

Thus, they tended to turn to young people who had grown up a bit with this and really didn’t give them any major rules. It was like the Wild West, although I’d argue you could probably do more damage with one tweet than you could with a trusty six-shooter back in the day.

Once things started to go haywire, due to missteps by the posters or generally not paying attention well enough to the hashtags involved in other posts, the leaders at those places started putting some basic rules in place. By now, most places have a pretty solid rule book on what people can and can’t do on social media, which includes where and when they can or can’t do it.

One of the things most organizations (and the cops who tend to pull Amy over) say is, “Not knowing the rules is no excuse for not following them.” This is why it’s important, upon getting a new job, to know what it is that you can and can’t do, especially in terms of your outward-facing presence.

I know there are things I can’t put up in my office (political endorsement signs) and things that probably could get me in trouble if they upset people (Vintage Cleveland Baseball nodders come to mind). There are also things that are a little more nebulous, like, “What is the rule of the thumb on using my computer to blog like this?”

Long story short, it pays to know what the rules are before they become problematic. And it also pays not to be a racist ass-hat, even if you don’t think people will call you out for it.

A Mississippi newspaper can criticize the city once again after a judge lifts her suppression order

The paper’s banner says, “We are patriotic blues lovers on buckle of the Cotton Belt.” The editorial says, “Don’t mess with the First Amendment.” The approach to website design says, “This site will download easily with your AOL free trial.”

THE LEAD: A judge in Mississippi, who had forced a local newspaper to remove an editorial critical of the city government from its website, reversed her decision on Wednesday, after the city dropped its lawsuit against the paper and the entire Fourth Estate lost its mind on her.

The judge, Crystal Wise Martin of Hinds County Chancery Court, lifted the order after Clarksdale city officials voted earlier this week to abandon their libel lawsuit against the local paper, The Clarksdale Press Register.

On Thursday, Wyatt Emmerich, the president of Emmerich Newspapers, which owns the The Press Register, said that he planned to republish the editorial at the center of the case.

THE BACKGROUND: The Clarksdale Press Register wrote that the city was being shifty in not notifying the publication that it planned to ask for a 2 percent “sin tax” at a Feb. 4 special meeting. The editorial also alleged the city leaders might have ulterior, personal motives for keeping the press ignorant of the event to give the proposal a smoother ride.

It turned out, the city clerk drafted the notice, but forgot to send it to the paper. The clerk apologized, but the horse was already out of the barn. The city voted at its next meeting to sue for libel, and that the editorial was likely to create problems at the legislative level for the bill.

As part of the suit, the city asked the court to force the paper to remove the editorial from its website, which the judge did, prior to her subsequent reversal.

STUPIDITY ON PARADE: First Amendment proponents (and college students cramming for their media law midterms) can easily point to why both parts of the city’s claims are stupid.

First, a city can’t sue for libel like Clarksdale was doing and get away with it. The 1964 NY Times v. Sullivan case set the standard for this issue, in that a public figure must demonstrate that the publication acted with “actual malice,” meaning it knew it was wrong and did something anyway. In this case, it was clear the paper DIDN’T have the document and that was the crux of the argument.

The only place it comes close to being problematic is in the paragraph: “Have commissioners or the mayor gotten kickback from the community?” it asked. “Until Tuesday we had not heard of any. Maybe they just want a few nights in Jackson to lobby for this idea — at public expense.” However, you can’t libel someone with a question, which is how all those talking heads on B-list “news” outlets have gotten away with their outlandish crap for years.

(I’d love to try this some time for marketing purposes: “Can we assume that using textbooks other than those written by Vince Filak means your media instructor is a psychopathic pedophile with several dead bodies in their garage?” I think I just heard one of the folks at Sage drop like a stone…)

Second, nothing says, “Let’s keep this quiet,” like starting a lawsuit against a newspaper, thus GUARANTEEING everyone on Earth is going to find out about this and want to read it. In fact, the paper reestablished the editorial on its website after the court ruling, and you can read the paper’s piece here.

The Press Register claims a weekly readership of 7,750. To put that in context, we were cranking out about 14,000 DAILY COPIES of the Ball State Daily News in Muncie, Indiana when I was advising that student newspaper back in the 2000s. Still, something tells me the Google searches for that place could draw enough energy to dim the sun after this ham-handed censorship effort and it’s not because people were excited to learn about “the birthplace of the blues” all of a sudden.

QUOTE OF THE YEAR: This one comes from Wyatt Emmerich, whose company owns the Press Register, talking about the city’s approach to this whole debacle:

“As I warned them, it blew up in their face and it created a national outcry,” he said. “It embarrassed the city, and they realized what they had done was a mistake.”

Trump Is Limiting The AP’s Access To White House Events Because It Won’t Use His Preferred Noun When Discussing The Gulf of Mexico

THE LEAD: The Trump administration barred several journalists from the Associated Press from reporting opportunities in and around the White House over the past week for not calling the body of water to the south of the country the Gulf of America.

AP executive editor Julie Pace noted Thursday that AP had been shut out of multiple events, including an open news conference with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the signing of at least one executive order and the swearing in of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as the Health and Human Services secretary.

“This is now the third day AP reporters have been barred from covering the president — first as a member of the pool, and now from a formal press conference — an incredible disservice to the billions of people who rely on The Associated Press for nonpartisan news,” Pace said.

The dispute began Tuesday, when the AP was informed that it would be barred from attending White House events because of the organization’s decision to continue using the name Gulf of Mexico, not the Gulf of America, as Trump decreed in an executive order last month.

BRIEF RECAP OF THE SITUATION: President Donald Trump declared that the Gulf of Mexico should actually be named the Gulf of America, a declaration he codified with an executive order on Jan. 20. He doubled down on this declaration, when he deemed Feb. 9 the first “Gulf of America Day.”

Apple and Google maps have made the switch to this nomenclature, even as media outlets and foreign officials have pushed back on this move. (Apparently Bing followed suit, but nobody really noticed because… I mean… c’mon… It’s Bing.) The president of Mexico has threatened to sue Google over this change, while the AP and the White House apparently remain in a standoff over the issue.

Trump also made other name changes, such as shifting Denali back to Mount McKinley. In that case, the entirety of the mountain was within the U.S., so it didn’t require the international community to buy in. (Some folks in Alaska aren’t thrilled, to be fair, and the state’s senators are trying to get this undone.)

DEALING WITH TRUMP, AP STYLE: The Associated Press is an international organization that operates in more than 100 countries, produces content in multiple languages and serves more than 1,300 news organizations daily, so even minor changes or small disputes can have major consequences. In addition, the AP style guide is the bible (not Bible) for journalists everywhere, so what they say, we all tend to use.

In this case, the AP tried to “split the baby” by both acknowledging Trump’s actions while also not letting 400 years of history and global tradition get scrapped with the stroke of a pen:

Screenshot

In short, “Here’s what we’ve always called it, here’s how it now impacts U.S. government stuff, here’s who can ignore it and here’s our best way forward.” Apparently, that wasn’t good enough for the Trump administration.

CAN TRUMP DO THIS (Part I) ?: The larger question of Trump’s right to rename the gulf unilaterally depends on the specific question being asked. As far as the U.S. government is concerned, yes, he can really do this and has. Reports indicate that both the Department of the Interior and the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), the official federal database of all U.S. geographic names, are moving in this direction.

In terms of what can be enforced upon the rest of the world, no. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea essentially established that countries have control of things like this only as far as 12 nautical miles from the coastline. (Mexico essentially makes this argument in its lawsuit against Google.) Also, as much as he might like it to be true, Trump does not dictate what everyone on the planet does. Therefore, his declaration has no jurisdiction beyond certain borders.

CAN TRUMP DO THIS (Part II)?: In regard to the issue of barring journalists from stuff, can Trump do it? Sure, and he’s done it before. In 2017, he banned The Guardian, CNN, the New York Times and several other media outlets from a “gaggle” briefing, based on coverage he didn’t like. In 2018, Trump folks barred CNN’s Kaitlan Collins from a Rose Garden event after she had questioned the president in a way that wasn’t taken well.

That same year, the administration revoked the media credentials of CNN’s Jim Acosta after an incident at a press briefing. (The White House reinstated the pass after CNN sued and a judge issued a temporary injunction on behalf of the network.) In 2019, he conducted a “mass purge” of journalists, restricting press access through “hard pass/soft pass” gamesmanship. Trump also just bounced a bunch of journalists out of their office space in the Pentagon, giving the space to outlets that give the administration more favorable coverage.

Generally speaking, the law dictates that the denial of a pass is within the rights of an administration, provided there is “an explicit and meaningful standard” to support its actions and “afford procedural protections.” That case did not say what it would take to revoke a pass, nor did it provide any clarity here in regard to who gets to go into the Oval Office or the Rose Garden or whatever.

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: There’s a lot to unpack here and it’s not entirely one-sided. As much as I hate having to discuss the First Amendment an “it depends” kind of way, at least this time, it doesn’t involve porn.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is not entirely wrong in saying that a) covering the White House isn’t something everyone gets to do and b) the administration does have some leeway in how it controls who gets to go where when space is limited. I know I can’t just hop on a plane and demand access to the press room, let alone slide into the Oval Office for a chinwag with DJT, just because I’m writing a blog that dozens of people read.

It’s also no big secret that sources have always played favorites with media outlets. It would piss me off to no end when one of my reporters at the Columbia Missourian would call a police source about some story we had heard about and be told, “Nope… Nothing like that going on.” Then, miraculously, the Columbia Daily Tribune’s ancient cops reporter would somehow manage to break THAT EXACT STORY as an “exclusive” within two days.

I also used to hate the way that the Muncie Star-Press managed to have a great “buddy-buddy” relationship with the Ball State athletic office, so whenever something important would be going on (adding lights to the stadium, scheduling a nationally televised game), the Daily News kids would get shut out and the Star-Press would slather it all over the front page. To think the Trump administration would play more fairly with the national press than some yokel sources in the Midwest would with the local press seems to strain credulity.

Hell, it was so obvious he played favorites during his first term, John Oliver had some fun with it:

These kinds of things aren’t a blatant violation of the First Amendment, even if they feel petty and unfair.

All of that being said, I hate what Trump did here and I totally support AP’s position in regard to the coercive nature of this exclusionary maneuver. It does smack of favoritism, it does undermine their ability to spread information and it reeks of petty bull-pucky. I have a long-standing hatred for bullying, and that’s just what is happening here: “Do what we tell you to do, or else.”

This isn’t a new thing for Trump, nor will it be the only instance of it. I imagine there will be more than a few press passes getting yanked over the next few years, along with the obligatory lawsuits to get the Trump administration to back down. I also imagine that there will be additional significant efforts to cow the media throughout Trump’s reign. If there’s one thing this administration has consistently blessed with favor, it’s those who lavish unrelenting and uncritical praise upon the Dear Leader.

AP right now is in a game of “chicken” with the White House and I certainly don’t want the AP to back down. We could argue that nomenclature of this nature is petty and stupid (see the “freedom fries” debacle), but the bigger issue would be the press caving to power to curry favor. That’s the kind of loss of credibility that the AP could never get back once their reporters lost it. So, please, AP folks, for the sake of all of us out here trying to teach students how to do quality, unbiased journalism, fight like hell to get back what you have lost.

That said, the establishment doesn’t owe the AP a Snickers bar simply because they’re used to getting top-shelf treatment. I would argue that if you work for AP, you’re probably among some of the best, most-resourceful and dedicated reporters on the planet. You don’t get to the top of the heap like that be being spoon-fed and softly petted, so treat this slight like any other obstacle you would need to overcome.

I’d suggest you follow the lead from the folks getting the shaft at the Pentagon: “We’re going to work around this cheap ploy, because that’s what we do and we will not be deterred in holding the administration to account for its actions because that’s our job.”

A Look at “Apple Cider Vinegar” and How the Media Ecosystem Works

Earlier this month, Netflix dropped its most recent “tru-ish crime drama” mini-series, “Apple Cider Vinegar.” The series follows the rise and fall of wellness “guru” Belle Gibson, whose claims that she survived a terminal brain tumor (and other similar health crises) through the use of a wellness diet.

Here’s the trailer, which gives you a pretty solid look at what you’ll get over the six-episode saga:

The trailer and the series both seem to emphasize this odd game of “one-on-one” between Belle and Milla, the latter of which is not a real person. Experts digging into the series have offered theories about who Milla might be based on and to what degree Belle knew her, but it’s not as “Hatfields and McCoys” as we see in some clips and episodes.

We could spend about 8,000 words doing a “what’s true and what’s not” about this whole situation, but that wouldn’t really get us much in the way of value. What is interesting is to see how we got to a six-part mini-series about this health influencer and how it’s part of a pattern in media.

I’ve made the case in multiple classes that whether you’re in print, broadcast, film, social media, public relations, advertising or any other part of media that I missed, you’re not in a silo, but part of larger media ecosystem. In some cases, this is easy to see and it’s pretty linear: A PR practitioner puts out a press release on X topic, which mainstream media practitioners receive and use to craft a story. That story then gets shared on social media, where other media participants add information, provide commentary, offer other facets of coverage and so forth. Based on how loud that gets, the mainstream media, the original PR firm or other PR agencies can choose to respond, augment or ignore what’s going on.

In the case of Belle Gibson, we start with the easiest media on-ramp available: Social media. She began posting on various websites in the early 2010s and then developed a following through her “Healthy Belle” Instagram account. As she gained followers and attention, she developed the app “The Whole Pantry” in 2013, which had recipes related to the lifestyle she said had helped her beat her brain tumor. The success of the app led a Penguin Books subsidiary to publish a print edition cookbook of the same name and concept in 2014.

As she continued to get more and more attention, she had both supporters and detractors on social media. Her fans saw her as providing an alternative to the “cut, burn and poison” approach to cancer, while others had a hard time believing she could stop Stage 4 brain cancer with a smoothie.

Around this time, another part of the media ecosystem kicked in, as investigative reporters at The Age received information from one of Gibson’s former friends in 2015 that undercut her claims of raising money for charity and her recovery from cancer. Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano began digging into Gibson’s past and her claims to find that significant doubts existed among people who knew Gibson that she ever had cancer. They also reported that she didn’t donate money she raised for charity to said charity and that fans were beginning to turn on her.

As social media was continuing to shift the tide, Gibson fessed up in 2015 to The Weekly, explaining she never had cancer. “60 Minutes Australia” did a giant episode on Gibson in 2015, which included a confronting interview:

At this time, both print/online and broadcast media were digging into Gibson even more. Penguin pulled her book, her social media empire began to collapse and other publications found themselves in hot water over previous coverage of Gibson. Cosmopolitan had given Gibson a “Fearless Female” award while Elle Australia had reported her “miracle” story without fact-checking her cancer claims.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, Gibson hired a PR firm to try to fix the situation. The folks there dropped her as the situation got out of hand.

In 2016, Consumer Affairs Victoria attempted to fine Gibson for violations of Australian Consumer Law. Reports indicate that she disappeared from public view, but as of 2020, she had not paid the fine.

While the mainstream media was keeping track of Gibson’s legal issues, Toscano and Donelly had turned their reporting into a longer-form read with the 2017 book, “The Woman Who Fooled the World.” They were also appearing on podcasts, media talk shows and more to discuss the situation.

Eventually, the story morphed into the “true-ish story based on a lie” that Netflix has put together, titled “Apple Cider Vinegar.” As the series launched, mainstream media stories about Gibson’s whereabouts have emerged, and, again, influencers and podcasters are taking another look at the story. (In addition, Netflix is posting the 2023 documentary, “The Search for Instagram’s Worst Con Artist,” next week. This piece covers the Gibson situation from a less “tru-ish” and more “true” angle.)

In looking back on this, we can see how this story continued to grow, morph and spread at least seven media forms (social, app, book, newspaper/website, broadcast, streaming, public relations) to say nothing of the tangential elements I likely missed. Obviously, not every story gets the full Netflix treatment or has Tara Brown ripping someone to shreds. However, it does demonstrate the ways in which the media ecosystem feeds upon an event, a situation, a story or a concept over time and across platforms.

EXERCISE TIME: Take a look at pretty much anything else a big-name streaming service is doing as a docu-series/docu-drama and see how many other tentacles of media you can find touching that story at any point. Try to isolate where the story really started and then piece together a timeline as best you can that provides a look at which media entered the fray where and contributed what aspects of information to the story.

A Voting Exercise for Media Students

Come for the participation in the democratic electoral process, stay for the sweet sticker.

The last time I tried writing about voting, it led to the first and (so far) last time I ever deleted a post on this blog.

I called it “Vote or whatever” and the point I was trying to make was that so many people are telling you what to do, you should feel free to ignore everyone and do what you wanted. It came across as kind of dismissive of the privilege of voting and I heard about it from a number of readers, including my mom.

“Your grandfather fought in a war overseas to protect this country and your rights,” she wrote, before explaining how stupid I sounded in my attempt to be anything but. She was right and rather than try to save the patient, I pulled the plug.

With that in mind, here’s my second attempt at a voting post with hopefully better results and maybe a better job of reaching my target audience.

I can’t speak intelligently on what it looks like in other states, but living in one of the swingiest swing states means we are getting buried in communication from presidential and senate candidates. Between TV, online, social media, mailers and text messages, I hear more from the Trump, Harris, Baldwin and Hovde campaigns in a day than I do from any four people I know.

It’s gotten so bad, I’m practically elated when I get an ad for hair loss, erectile dysfunction or “The Real WHATEVER of WHEREVER” television show.

Given all of that, I’m stunned that there exists such a thing as an “undecided presidential voter” left anywhere in the country, with the possible exception of anyone who was just awakened from a four-year coma on Sunday afternoon.

That said, when I went to vote in the primary, I found myself flummoxed on at least one-third of the ballot. I had no idea which person would make for a good state rep, a solid judge, a reputable school board member or good county board member. I also found myself trying to navigate through at least two double-negative statements in each of the advisory ballot initiatives I was asked to assess.

I know that this year, the school is asking for a bond referendum, and although I normally approve every dime a school district wants, I can’t tell you exactly where that money is going.

A crucial reason for this lack of knowledge is a lack of strong, local media outlets that provide critical coverage of these races. As much as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN and other national media outlets cover every minute of the national races, the local media in so many places either are understaffed or have shuttered their operations.

Researchers at the University of North Carolina have dug into a phenomenon they dubbed “news deserts.” This is defined as “a community, either rural or urban, with limited access to the sort of credible and comprehensive news and information that feeds democracy at the grassroots level.”

The researchers have determined that more than 250 counties in the country are without a single local newspaper while half of the counties in the country are served by a single local newspaper, which is usually a weekly. Given what I’ve seen of these kinds of publications, they are almost always understaffed and rarely interested or capable of doing the kinds of critical political coverage that will inform their readers.

With all of that in mind, it becomes increasingly difficult to make an intelligent decision on those down-ballot, local-issue choices we face. So here is the exercise I would suggest for any media students who might be lukewarm on voting.

First, go vote. Even if you are in a solidly red or solidly blue state, where you might feel your vote doesn’t matter, it’s a worthy exercise. I always joke that at least I’m undoing the vote of the dumbest person I know, but it means more than that to be sure.

While you are in that booth, look at the number of races on which you feel uninformed or under-informed. What level does that start at for you? Is it the national races, the statewide races or the local races? What about any ballot initiatives? How much do you know about them and can you translate them? (Or, if you see fit, you can try to learn all this before you vote so you can make better choices, but that isn’t always easy and can sometimes feel like a bridge too far in the digital information age.)

Once you cast your ballot and get your “I VOTED” sticker, go see what your local media outlets have run over the past few weeks or months. Also, look through the media outlets you traditionally use, which could be anything from YouTube to TikTok. Was there anything out there that could have helped you learn more? Or do you maybe need a different media diet?

Finally, consider what it is you could bring to the table as a media practitioner going forward for a community that probably feels even more lost and confused than you are. In so many ways, you can have a significant impact on what people know about things that can strongly impact their local communities.

You might still feel like your vote doesn’t matter, but I hope you will realize that a career in any form of local, fact-based media surely can.

I think I found my first tattoo, thanks to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis: “It’s the First Amendment, stupid.”

Here is an ad at the center of Florida’s Amendment 4 situation. Like it or hate it, ads like this are protected speech.

THE LEAD: A federal judge decided that Florida officials can’t threaten TV stations for running ads they don’t like, using language that has me pondering my first tattoo:

Judge Mark Walker blasted state officials in an order issued late Thursday over a letter demanding broadcasters pull the ad, writing that its content is political speech protected by the U.S. Constitution.

“To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid,” Walker wrote in a temporary restraining order released Thursday night.

BACKGROUND: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his administration had threatened broadcast stations that ran ads supporting Amendment 4, which would overturn his executive order that imposed a six-week ban on abortions.

A letter from DeSantis’ health department’s general counsel told the stations it would seek criminal charges against stations if they didn’t pull the ads in 24 hours that “spread lies” about the current ban.

John Wilson, the author of the letter, has since resigned, stating “it has become clear in recent days that I cannot join you on the road that lies before the agency.”

A BRIEF REVIEW OF THE LAW: The argument Ron DeSantis and his crew have made here is that the ads are false, so he has the right to stop them. To borrow a phrase from the judge: That’s not how this works, stupid.

In cases of false commercial advertising, the Federal Trade Commission gets involved upon complaints from the public. The truth-in-advertising laws here and the FTC’s authority relate to demonstrably false or genuinely misleading advertisements related to products, goods and services.

Therefore, when you see an ad that promises you will lose 10 pounds a day on a jelly-donut diet, without the usual small-print caveats about not eating the donuts and making sure to exercise, the FTC can threaten the organization with fines. For example, it recently settled a claim against the makers of Pyrex glass for $88,000, after the company stated many of its imported kitchen items were “made in the U.S.A.”

The FTC, however, doesn’t handle political advertising and in most cases, and neither does the other group that looks into broadcast content of this nature: The Federal Communication Commission. According to its own website, the FCC neither pre-approves or reviews political advertising, nor does it “ensure the accuracy of statements that are made by candidates and issue advertisers.” In fact, the one thing it DOES do in this regard is prohibit the censorship of candidate-sponsored ads.

In short, candidates can lie if they want to. In terms of issue-oriented advertising, the First Amendment provides a wide level of protection for speech on the air waves. This article does a great job of outlining where a few guardrails do exist for the sake of cable news stations and other media outlets, in terms of stopping patently false stuff from going out on their channels.

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: Given the relative randomness of jurisprudence in this country, including judges not understanding how the First Amendment and journalism tends to work, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised that a judge supported free speech in the appropriate way. Whether the ads were pro or con and whether they were true or false isn’t the point. The point is that the law exists for a reason, and when mini-despots decide to take a ham-handed whack at someone’s free speech rights, it’s nice to see those people put in their place.

That said, I’m not entirely thrilled that the law provides literally no mechanism to stop people from lying in a political campaign, nor is there really any recourse for people who are lied about to put a stop to the lying. I’m a big believer in facts, so I’d really like it if politicians told me the truth. (I’m also a big fan of having a full head of hair, but that’s not happening today either.)

Given the way AI has made it so much easier for people to manipulate everything, it’s really scary that not only can people make ads where we can’t tell the truth from fiction, but also to know that the law says the lying part is OK. The FCC is trying to get some sort of transparency law put into place that would require advertisers to disclose the use of AI in campaign ads, but it’s not here yet.

With that in mind, this puts a lot more pressure on fact-checking organizations to ferret out the truth and private sleuths to dig into potential AI fakes. It also requires more of us as citizens to do our own research when we see ads claiming that Donald Trump once killed a unicorn and that Kamala Harris hosted a Tupperware party for MS-13 members who entered the U.S. illegally.

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