{"id":63094,"date":"2015-08-31T12:00:57","date_gmt":"2015-08-31T11:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=63094"},"modified":"2015-08-30T17:13:41","modified_gmt":"2015-08-30T16:13:41","slug":"jorge-ramos-commits-journalism-gets-immediately-attacked-by-journalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/08\/jorge-ramos-commits-journalism-gets-immediately-attacked-by-journalists\/","title":{"rendered":"Jorge Ramos Commits Journalism, Gets Immediately Attacked by Journalists"},"content":{"rendered":"

(updated below)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Aug. 26 2015 – <\/em>The Republican presidential candidate leading every poll, Donald Trump, recently unveiled his plan<\/a> to forcibly deport all 11 million human beings<\/a> residing in the U.S. without proper documentation, roughly half<\/em> of whom have children born in the U.S. (and\u00a0who are thus American citizens). As George Will noted last week<\/a>, \u201cTrump\u2019s roundup would be about 94 times larger than the\u00a0wartime internment of 117,000 persons of Japanese descent<\/a>.\u201d It would require a massive expansion of the most tyrannical\u00a0police state powers far beyond their already immense post-9\/11 explosion.\u00a0And that\u2019s to say nothing of the incomparably ugly sentiments that\u00a0Trump\u2019s\u00a0advocacy of this plan, far before\u00a0its implementation, is predictably unleashing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Photo:<\/a>

Photo: Charlie Neibergall\/AP<\/p><\/div>\n

Jorge Ramos, the influential anchor of Univision and an American immigrant from Mexico, has been denouncing Trump\u2019s anti-immigrant rhetoric. Yesterday at a Trump press conference in Iowa, Ramos stood and questioned Trump on his immigration views. Trump at first ignored him, then scolded him for speaking without being called on and repeatedly ordered him to \u201csit down,\u201d then told him: \u201cGo back to Univision.\u201d When Ramos refused to sit down and shut up as ordered, a Trump bodyguard physically removed him\u00a0from the room. After the press conference concluded, Ramos returned and again questioned Trump about immigration, with the two mostly talking over each other as Ramos\u00a0asked Trump about the\u00a0fundamental flaws in his policy. Afterward, Ramos said<\/a>:\u00a0\u201cThis is personal. \u2026 He\u2019s talking about our parents, our friends, our kids and our babies.\u201d<\/p>\n

One might think that in a conflict between a journalist removed from a\u00a0press conference for asking questions and the politician who had him removed, journalists would side with their fellow journalist. Some are. But many American journalists have seized on the incident to denounce Ramos for the crime of having opinions and even suggesting that he\u2019s not really acting as a journalist at all.<\/p>\n

Politico<\/em>\u2019s political reporter Marc Caputo unleashed a Twitter rant this morning against Ramos. \u201cThis is bias: taking the news personally, explicitly advocating an agenda,\u201d he began<\/a>. Then<\/a>: \u201cTrump can and should be pressed on this. Reporters can do this without being activists\u201d and<\/a> \u201csome reporters still try to approach their stories fairly & decently. & doing so does not prevent good reporting.\u201d Not only did\u00a0Ramos not do journalism, Caputo argued, but he actually ruins journalism: \u201cMy issue is his reporting is imbued with take-it-personally bias. . . .\u00a0 we fend off phony bias allegations & Ramos only helps to wrongly justify them. . . .One can ask and report without the bias. I\u2019ve done it for years & will continue 2 do so.\u201d<\/p>\n

A\u00a0Washington Post<\/em> article<\/a> about the incident actually equated the two figures, beginning with the headline: \u201cJorge Ramos is a conflict junkie, just like his latest target: Donald Trump.\u201d The article\u00a0twice suggested that Ramos\u2019 behavior was something other than journalism, claiming that his advocacy of immigration reform \u201cblurred the line between journalist and activist\u201d and that \u201cby owning the issue of immigration, Ramos has also blurred the line between journalist and activist.\u201d\u00a0That Ramos was acting more as an \u201cactivist\u201d than a \u201cjournalist\u201d was a commonly expressed criticism among media elites this morning.<\/p>\n

Here we find, yet again, the enforcement of unwritten, very recent, distinctively corporatized rules of supposed \u201cneutrality\u201d and faux objectivity which all Real\u00a0Journalists must obey, upon pain of being expelled from the profession. A Good Journalist\u00a0must pretend they have no opinions, feign\u00a0utter indifference to the outcome of political debates, never take any sides, be utterly\u00a0devoid of any human connection to or passion for the issues they cover, and most of all, have no role to play whatsoever in opposing even the most extreme injustices.<\/p>\n

Thus: you do not call torture \u201ctorture\u201d if the U.S. government falsely denies that it is; you do not say that the chronic shooting of unarmed black citizens by the police is a major problem since not everyone agrees that it is; and you do not object when a major presidential candidate stokes dangerous nativist resentments while demanding mass deportation of millions of people.\u00a0These are the strictures\u00a0that have\u00a0utterly neutered American journalism, drained it of its vitality and core purpose, and ensured that it does little other than serve those who\u00a0wield the greatest power and have the highest interest in preserving the status quo.<\/p>\n

What is more noble for a journalist to do: confront a dangerous, powerful billionaire-demagogue spouting hatemongering nonsense about mass deportation, or sit by quietly and pretend to have no opinions on any of it and that \u201cboth sides\u201d are equally deserving of respect and\u00a0have equal claims to validity? As Ramos put it simply<\/a>, in what should not even need to be said: \u201cI\u2019m a reporter. My job is to ask questions. What\u2019s \u2018totally out of line\u2019 is to eject a reporter from a press conference for asking questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, some of the most important and valuable moments in American journalism have come from the nation\u2019s most influential journalists rejecting this cowardly demand that they take no position, from Edward R. Murrow\u2019s brave\u00a01954\u00a0denunciation of McCarthyism<\/a> to Walter Cronkite\u2019s 1968 refusal to treat<\/a> the U.S. government\u2019s lies about the Vietnam War as anything other than what they were. Does anyone doubt that today\u2019s neutrality-\u00fcber-alles\u00a0<\/em>journalists would denounce them as \u201cactivists\u201d for inappropriately \u201ctaking a side\u201d?<\/p>\n

As Jack Shafer documented<\/a> two years ago, crusading and \u201cactivist\u201d journalism is centuries old and has a very noble heritage. The notion that journalists must be beacons of opinion-free, passion-devoid, staid, impotent neutrality is an extremely new one, the byproduct of the increasing corporatization of American journalism. That\u2019s not hard to understand: One of the supreme values of\u00a0large corporations is fear of offending anyone, particularly those in power, since that\u2019s bad for business. The way that conflict-avoiding value is infused into the media outlets that\u00a0these corporations\u00a0own is to inculcate their journalists that their primary duty is to avoid offending anyone, especially those who wield power, which above all means never taking a clear position about anything, instead just serving as a mindless, uncritical vessel for \u201cboth sides,\u201d what NYU Journalism Professor Jay Rosen has dubbed \u201cthe view from nowhere.\u201d Whatever else that is, it is most certainly not a universal or long-standing principle of how journalism should be conducted.<\/p>\n

The worst aspect of these journalists\u2019 demands for \u201cneutrality\u201d is the conceit that they are actually neutral, that they are themselves not activists. To be lectured about the need for journalistic neutrality by\u00a0Politico<\/em> of all places \u2014 the ultimate and most loyal servant of the D.C. political and corporate class<\/a> \u2014 by itself illustrates what a rotten sham this claim is. I set out my argument about this at length in my 2013 exchange with Bill Keller<\/a> and won\u2019t repeat it all here;\u00a0suffice to say, all journalism<\/em> is deeply subjective and serves some group\u2019s interests. All journalists constantly express opinions and present the world in accordance with their deeply subjective biases \u2014 and thus constantly serve one agenda or another \u2014 whether they honestly admit doing so or dishonestly pretend they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, demands for \u201cneutrality\u201d and \u201cobjectivity\u201d are little more than rules designed to shield those with the greatest power from meaningful challenge. As BuzzFeed\u2019s Adam Serwer insightfully<\/a> put it<\/a> this morning, \u201c\u2018Objective\u2019 reporters were openly mocking Trump not that long ago, but Ramos has not reacted to Trump\u2019s poll numbers with\u00a0appropriate deference . . . .\u00a0Just a reminder that what is considered objective reporting is intimately tied to power or the perception of power<\/em>.\u201d Expressing opinions that are in accord with, and which serve the interests of, those who wield the greatest political and economic power is always acceptable\u00a0for the\u00a0journalists who most tightly embrace the pretense of \u201cneutrality\u201d; it\u2019s only when an opinion constitutes dissent or when it\u2019s expressed with too\u00a0little reverence for the most powerful does it cross the line into \u201cactivism\u201d and \u201cbias.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Ramos\u2019 supposed sin of being what the Post<\/em> called\u00a0a\u00a0\u201cconflict junkie\u201d \u2014 something that sounds to be nothing more than a\u00a0derogatory way of characterizing\u00a0\u201cadversary journalism\u201d \u2014 is even more ridiculous. Please spare me the tripe about how Ramos\u2019 real sin was one of rudeness,\u00a0that he failed to wait for explicit permission from the Trumpian Strongman to speak. Aside from the absurdity of viewing Victorian-era etiquette as some sort of journalistic virtue, Trump\u2019s vindictive war with Univision made it unlikely he\u2019d call on Ramos, and journalists don\u2019t always need to be \u201cpolite\u201d to do their jobs.<\/p>\n

Beyond that, whether a reporter must be deferential to a politician is one of those questions on which people shamelessly switch sides based on which politician is being treated rudely at the moment, as the past liberal protests over the \u201crudeness\u201d<\/a> displayed to Obama by conservative journalists<\/a> demonstrate. That Ramos is not One of Them \u2014 Joe Scarborough appeared not even to know who Ramos is and suggested<\/a> he was just seeking \u201c15 minutes of fame,\u201d despite Ramos\u2019 having far greater influence and fame than Scarborough could dream of having \u2014 clearly fueled the journalistic\u00a0resentment\u00a0that Ramos\u2019 behavior was out of line).<\/p>\n

What Ramos did here was pure journalism in its classic and most noble expression: He aggressively confronted a politician\u00a0wielding a significant amount of power over some pretty horrible things that the politician is doing and saying. As usual when someone commits a real act of journalism aimed at the most powerful in the U.S., those leading the charge against him are other journalists, who so tellingly\u00a0regard\u00a0actual journalism as a gauche and irreverent crime\u00a0against those who wield the greatest power and thus merit the greatest deference.<\/p>\n

UPDATE<\/u><\/strong>: Caputo, while noting that he disagrees with many of the views in this article, objects to one phrase in particular and sets forth his objection here<\/a>. I quoted and\/or linked to all of his referenced statements and am happy to allow readers to decide if that one phrase\u00a0was accurate. I am quite convinced it was and stand by it.<\/p>\n

________________________________<\/p>\n

Glenn Greenwald – glenn.greenwald@\u200btheintercept.com<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 firstlook.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jorge Ramos, the influential anchor of Univision and an American immigrant from Mexico, has been denouncing Trump\u2019s anti-immigrant rhetoric. Yesterday at a Trump press conference in Iowa, Ramos stood and questioned Trump on his immigration views.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63094\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}