Here at "Riffed From the Headlines," it has been a year of compiling the worst and misbegotten in the media landscape – so much so that we can deliver the (dis)honors seen in the press in stages, awarding the malpractice with a column-specific honorarium dubbed "The Heckler Awards." (The previous categories can be found here, here, and here.)
For this entry – the third round – we delve into examples of reporter malpractice, pundit dysphoria, news outlet nefariousness, and other general deviations away from journalism ethics collected throughout the year. So, on with the nominations and winners!
LOW OCTANE GAS LIGHTING – Weak attempts at selling us a lie
In reaction to Elon Musk labeling Voice Of America "State-funded Media," CEO Amanda Bennett gave this mirthful defense: "We completely reject the implications of the label 'government-funded.' Of course, we're government-funded, but it's potentially misleading."
On the Katie Phang show, she spoke with two women negatively impacted by the new abortion law signed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. The only problem: Both women had their issues prior to the law even being put into effect.
Taylor Lorenz actually stated that The New York Times only accepts the positions and reports that are right-wing opinions. Yes, she was being serious.
On a visit to CNN, celebrated historical documentarian Ken Burn was heavily critical of alleged negative policies put in place by Gov. Ron DeSantis. Burns said the Founders are rolling over in their graves over DeSantis, including John Adams. Burns should be well aware Adams was the president who actually jailed opposition journalists while president.
WINNER: Oliver Darcy – CNN
CNN's media maven played the yearlong game of "There's No Evidence" regarding the congressional hearing of The Twitter Files. Darcy tries to sell that there is no proof the government was colluding with the platform, despite the revealed evidence that the intel community, White House, and Democratic Party had direct contact with executives to silence accounts.
I try not to give oxygen to CNN's media newsletter, which is now run by the JV squad and has lost any semblance of relevance it once had.
— Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) February 9, 2023
But this framing of the Hunter Biden Twitter story is outrageous gaslighting that shows just how far the anti-speech activists have fallen. pic.twitter.com/bh7vxMy8vD
GLOSSARY OVER THINGS – Attempts to contort the language to fit news narratives
The Associated Press previously altered its interpretation of "insurrection" to label the January 6 rioters, but after a number of leftist protests in government, including that inside the Tennessee capitol chambers by Dem politicians, it was changed again to clear them of guilt.
On "60 Minutes Australia," a report was made on "gender-creative parenting," a genteel way of calling emotionally damaged parents who are trying to raise gender-free children so the tykes can choose how to be identified. These are classified as "They-bies."
Politico was found to have a new language guide with directions on "people using birth control" or "abortion patients." There was also "marginalized genders," which Politico describes as the "preferred term to describe everyone who is not a cis man, i.e., a man who is not transgender." It's all enough to give one a migraine. Or should that be termed as a "they-graine"?!
CNN was upset with the way conservatives successfully contort liberal terminology to use against them politically. This was dubbed as "verbal jiu-jitsu."
WINNER: Associated Press
In a deleted post, the syndicate put a new twist on the well-known style guide, as the AP was roundly mocked when it made the call to remove definite articles from oppressive usage in their articles. Literally, the syndicate dictates limiting the use of the word "The." According to the AP, "We recommend avoiding general and often dehumanizing 'the' labels such as 'the poor,' 'the mentally ill,' 'the French'…" With this in mind, we feel good about ourselves, as we stopped calling the AP "The Press" some time ago.
FIRST AMENDMENT STRIKE FORCE – Attacks on free expression by the industry relying upon it
As he interviewed the author of a book about her whistleblowing on Facebook, Jake Tapper pushed for fascist censorship on social media to combat fascism.
Jen Psaki was perfectly at ease with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pushing for the government to silence Fox News.
On CNN, Kirsten Powers tries to say she is fully in favor of free speech and says that if Republicans do not want to be censored, then they should stop saying things worthy of being censored.
Following the Tennessee high school shooting, Twitter was locking accounts showing details about the Trans Day Of Vengeance.
WINNER: Michael D. Shear and David McCabe – The New York Times
In just a stunning piece of oblivious journalism, these writers began by opposing the ruling of a judge who told the Biden administration it needed to refrain from working with social media to silence citizens. This approach was from the standpoint of misinformation needing to be addressed, and the article was itself filled with misinformation in defense of Biden and his censorship efforts.
DNC PR FIRM – When the press serves as the mouthpiece for the Democrats
After Biden was caught with a cheat sheet with reporters' names and prepared answers by the press, CNN covered this, and instead of looking critically at the collusion, the focus was on the Republican reaction.
In pushing for more statist rule in Washington, Joe Scarborough suggests that we need a strong IRS in order to keep Americans safe.
Jake Tapper was bothered that Illinois Senator Dick Durbin was not moving to quickly get rid of an infirm California Senator Diane Feinstein.
Mika Brzezinski announces how mad she is that the media and Biden's staff are not doing more to hide the videos of Biden stumbling and falling.
WINNER: Brian Slodysko – Associated Press
With more evidence of Joe Biden and his son's money issues being released, the AP decided to look into matters of financial impropriety and shell companies – not with the Bidens, but with GOP investigator James Comer. Slodysko's attempt to equate the two managed to underscore how bad Biden's issues appear.
DEMO-LITION PROJECT – Instances where outlets appear to work against their own ratings
The Fox News show "The Five" on one day had better ratings than CNN's programming from the late afternoon through its primetime lineup. That is, a solitary viewing on Fox drew a bigger audience than seven hours of CNN programming combined.
Following the Donald Trump town hall, Anderson Cooper began his next show by stating he understood if viewers stopped watching his network.
Many took Cooper up on his offer, as CNN hit record new lows in the viewing audience demographics number in September.
The new program "King Charles," with Gayle King and Charles Barkley, had the lowest primetime debut on CNN in over a decade.
WINNER: MSNBC
Following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, the cable news networks all experienced a surge in viewers, including Newsmax and NewsNation. The one outlier was MSNBC, whose rabid anti-Israel coverage the weekend of the attack led to a steep 33% drop in audience.
CARTOGRAPHY STUDIO – News outlets showing a struggle with geography
CNN showed it has a challenge with placing the cities in Israel and Gaza.
With a major damn collapsing due to Russian war efforts, Time magazine declared this disaster could become Ukraine's Chornobyl. (Who wants to tell them?)
In a now-repaired post, when Gov. Gavin Newsom was pushing for a 28th Amendment for gun control, the Huffington Post reported that 69 states would be needed to pass.
Vox tried to sell the case that Disney was provoking Gov. Ron DeSantis with a Pride Days celebration, except it was focusing on an event being held in Disneyland, California.
WINNER: Christopher Lamb – CNN
In attempting to make a trenchant point about the Israel-Hamas War during the Christmas holiday, Lamb made the strong contention that were Mary and Joseph to have their famous biblical trek today, Jesus would have been born in Gaza, and buried under rubble. That Bethlehem is not located in Gaza is a major mistake, made worse by the fact that Lamb is CNN's Vatican correspondent.
BOTH KINDS OF STANDARDS – The contradictions in coverage based on partisanship
After spending column inches explaining how Jason Aldean's song "Try That In Small Town" is racist, at the same time, it produced a piece about the South African political song "Kill The Boer" not actually being controversial.
Mara Gay manages to look at two cases of teenagers who were shot and arrives at two conclusions. When it was a white victim, the issue was the guns, and when it was a black victim, it was about race.
After a year of wailing and misrepresenting Florida schools allegedly "banning" books, when WaPo reported on teachers in Washington pulling "To Kill a Mockingbird" over progressive sensibilities, it was said that the teachers were "blocking" the novel to protect students from harmful content.
Dropbox manipulation, ballot harvesting, and election denials were reported on by the Associated Press, but these details were not delivered with outrage and content about this being a threat to our democracy – largely because this was a story involving Democratic Party candidates.
WINNERS: Various Outlets
When it was revealed that Joe Biden had himself kept classified documents, in multiple locations, for decades, including those he was not cleared to possess as a senator, the media complex hurt itself straining to explain how it was completely different from Donald Trump having done the same thing.
As soon as @KenDilanianNBC says BIden's docs were "inadvertently packed and he didn't know about them", you know the cleanup crew is working in full effect.
— Lie-Able Sources (@LieAbleSources) March 23, 2023
Since when is ignorance of legality an escape clause? pic.twitter.com/FqTfn6Yan9
DEMOCRATIC CUSTODIAL SERVICES – Working to cover for the foibles of one party
After Joe Biden permitted a Chinese spy balloon to traverse the entire country, Natasha Bertrand came on to assure that there was no sensitive data collected and transmitted to the Chi-Coms…even though she says there is no way of knowing what was collected and how much.
After Joe Biden stated to cameras that Russia's Vladimir Putin was losing the war in "Iraq," Bloomberg helped out by editing away the error, on behalf of the president.
When Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman stumbled verbally through a hearing, sounding incoherent at times, WaPo's Jeff Stein delivered a clean rendition of his words because he had reprinted a transcript fed to him by Fetterman's handlers.
To deflect from Biden's inflation driving up food costs, The Wall Street Journal offered up a helpful solution – we should just skip eating breakfast.
WINNER: Associated Press
When the story about Virginia Democratic candidate Susanna Gibson performing on a live sex account on an adult porn website was beginning to emerge, the AP sat on its information and instead went to the Gibson campaign team to alert them about the news.
BODY CHECKING THE FACT-CHECKERS (Baseless corrections)
PolitiFact contested a photo of Joe Biden lounging on the shore, declaring that although he was vacationing "ON" the beach, he technically was not "AT" the beach.
Glenn Kessler set a new standard for error-prone fact-checking when he waded into the Soros-funds-Alvin Bragg details. After others had been corrected on denying Soros funded him, Kessler tried to insist he had not, and then when he received a Community Note, he responded to the trolls – and was promptly corrected yet again.
The Poynter Institute, the source behind PolitiFact, demanded that the Media Resource Center, the source behind NewsBusters, take down a parody site of Poynter. The fact-checkers could not figure out that the creators of the site had merely linked the MRC.
The gang at Snopes seemed to forget that a fact check is supposed to be the definitive report on a story. In looking into Elon Musk's alleged involvement with the Oceangate submersible disaster, the site managed to declare the story to be TRUE, then UNPROVEN, and then FALSE.
WINNER: Glenn Kessler – Washington Post
Displaying all of the now-known tendencies of fact-checkers not wanting to look into Joe Biden's perpetual lying, Kessler sat down to address Joe's fable-weaving. In the entirety of his piece detailing these falsehoods, Kessler was incapable of describing any of those as "lies," resorting to a laundry list of euphemisms: "Aren't credible / likes to tell stories / propensity to exaggerate / embellish tales / doubts about his truthfulness / his version / personal tales / cannot be verified / refuted by contemporary accounts / implausible story / claims / story has evolved / did not add up / amended his statement / not plausible."
BODY CHECKING THE FACT-CHECKERS (Useless Corrections) – Instead of correcting the president, these are the kind of stories being researched
USA Today found out the story of a vigilante cutting off the man-buns of victims was not real but "stolen Satire."
Snopes declared it is FALSE that Sweden has officially declared sex to be a competitive sport.
Reuters debunked the claim that Gov. Ron DeSantis became enraged to learn his daughters were watching the Disney film "Frozen" on a regular basis.
USA Today confirmed that a video claiming to show a UFO landing is actually footage of a theme park ride lit up at night.
WINNER: PolitiFact
The outlet felt that time was needed to address a random account on the internet declaring that Dr. Anthony Fauci is not real. After research, it concluded that he is indeed a genuine person.