Less than two weeks after an election that sent liberals desperately searching for a dwindling number of safe spaces where they'll be shielded from opinions they don't share, the top editor at the reliably leftward Boston Globe tells his staff they must be "wide open" to new ways of covering President-elect Donald Trump and his administration.
Globe editor Brian McGrory sent out a message Friday to the paper's reporters and editors, with a full copy making its way to media critic/Northeastern journalism professor Dan Kennedy and his widely read blog, Media Nation.
It was this from Kennedy that caught my attention -- McGrory "addresses the question of whether the Globe will 'normalize' Donald Trump (answer: no, but) (emphasis added).... plus his customary fulsome praise all around."
Once a reader got past the obligatory attaboy back-patting came the good stuff --
Going forward, covering Donald Trump as the president-elect, a Trump administration, and America in the Trump era, there's no need for us to recalibrate our approach (emphasis added and again), except, hopefully, to redeploy some people to Washington. We'll be fair, we'll be tough, and we'll be ready to pounce on the most interesting and thoughtful stories possible. We will not for a moment normalize bigotry and misogyny, if he continues down the path of the campaign and with some early appointments. But we will also be wide open to the idea that his may be a novel and perhaps effective presidency, a non-ideologue in the age of hyper-partisanship. In short, we don't know what the hell is about to happen. Nobody does. But, again, it's why we matter.
Wow -- Trump hasn't even taken office yet and he's already had an "era" named after him.
So while "there's no need for us to recalibrate our approach," McGrory writes -- here comes that "but" cited by Kennedy -- Trump's presidency may be "novel" and "perhaps effective." In other needs, we do need to recalibrate while claiming we're not in order to save face.
As for evidence of McGrory's rationale for sending the memo, look no further than what he writes shortly after --
Some staffers have asked worthwhile questions about whether they are allowed to contribute to activist organizations, and participate in marches and vigils and the like (emphasis added). The answer is that we encourage everyone to live a full, meaningful life outside of the Globe. Our journalism is actually the better for it.
And a full and meaningful life definitely includes frequent participation in protests, vigils, sit-ins, blocking highways, etc. Conservatives, meanwhile, are far less likely to take part because they are too busy at work or raising their children.
But we can't allow our staffers to take part in activity that calls into question the essential fairness and neutrality of the Globe -- more important now than ever. Our ethics policy is clear on this, in terms of forbidding contributions or other involvement in organizations or campaigns that push candidates, ballot questions, or legislation. You'll ask about causes. We'll fold most of those into the group as well.
Does anyone believe that "some staffers" at the Globe asked if they could take part in pro-Trump activities? Oh wait, there aren't any planned in the near-future anyway. Trump supporters just staged their biggest protest ever on election day.
Six weeks ago, the Globe predictably endorsed Hillary Clinton and urged its readers "to run, not walk" to the polls to vote for her. Along with Trump's "obvious unsuitability" for the highest office, the just-released Access Hollywood audio showed that "the GOP nominee needs to see a psychiatrist, not a nuclear-launch code."
That was so early October. Trump is now President-elect, amid widespread and growing doubt that media outlets act in good faith with their political coverage. Trump won only 33 percent of the vote in Massachusetts, but that's more than a million people in this deep-blue state. Extrapolate to the Bay State as a whole and the number doubles. Trump also won nearly half the vote just across the border in New Hampshire. That's a lot of potential readers for a newspaper editor to shrug off, especially in another era we're living through, that of plummeting readership. It's the sort of dynamic that just might make one recalibrate.
