From our Fractured Media files, it is time for a new round of nominations for nefarious news nonsense! In recognizing the efforts of press unprofessionalism, journalistic sloth, and generally deserved media mockery, we have created The Golden Remington Awards.
This trophy honors the olden days when hard-scrabble hacks committed actual journalism and hammered out dispatches on those hefty wordsmith devices. To commemorate that past of muckraking reporting and shoe leather investigation, we acknowledge those who fail today or misreport in an audacious fashion.
In this edition, the election prep delivered its share of curiosities and embarrassments in the press. These are the inauspicious nominations in several categories, hoping to be (dis)honored at the end of the year for the 2024 Remmy Awards.
Distinguished Investigative Reporting
In a clear dose of obliviousness the Times committed an act of attempted election interference with a look into misinformation allegedly causing election interference. Grant looked into the YouTube accounts of numerous figures on the platform supposedly delivering misinformation on the upcoming vote, and the deeply slanted approach was obvious.
All of those targeted were conservative accounts, the accusations of false information were suspect and barely proven, and his entire effort was backed by research done by Media Matters for America. This should have been an embarrassment for any journo capable of this emotion.
This completely disregarded effort was made worse by the simple conclusion to his work: With nearly 300 examples found, not a single one was deemed as offensive as Nico and MMFA wanted them labeled.
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A YouTube spokeswoman said none of the 286 videos violated its community guidelines. ‘The ability to openly debate political ideas, even those that are controversial, is an important value — especially in the midst of election season,’ she said in a statement.
YouTube once removed 2020 misinformation, fearing real-world harm. Now it’s amplifying and profiting from 2024 falsehoods. https://t.co/crFhIK9UQR
— Nico Grant (@nicoagrant) October 31, 2024
Distinguished Explanatory Reporting
Following the disappointment that YouTube did not take the bait to silence the conservatives, MMFA came out with its follow-up decrying this lack of action. At the very same time, they also offered up a report on how unacceptable it will be that a Trump administration will work to silence media outlets.
So to summarize: It is appalling that conservatives will want to silence media voices, AND it is appalling that they have been unable to silence conservative media voices.
Behold the brilliance of the fevered thinkers at Media Matters.
In two separate pieces:
– Complaint about right-wing media wanting to silence the “free press”.
– Complaint right-wing media is not being silenced.Don’t ever change, @MMFA pic.twitter.com/BNI49GBA4T
— Brad Slager: CNN+ Lifetime Subscriber (@MartiniShark) November 3, 2024
Distinguished Editorial Writing
In pre-election analysis, Mo Dowd looked over why Kamala Harris was struggling in the polls with male voters. Women were backing Harris at a 60 percent clip, and this was seen as swell, but men supporting Trump at the same level was deemed toxic masculinity. Then, when looking at why males might feel Democrats are driving them away, Dowd resorted to the very language that repels men.
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Cartoonish macho posturing / Trump’s swaggering, bullying and insulting / shrinking male primacy / Trump is exploiting the crisis among Gen Z men, a crisis driven by loneliness, Covid isolation, economic insecurity, a lack of purpose / Trump is phallocentric
Donald, your insecurity is showing.https://t.co/mgYyYzymo8
— Maureen Dowd (@maureendowd) October 26, 2024
Distinguished Explanatory Reporting
The brain trust at the Never-Trump hive, The Bulwark, gathered after the election to have a weepy struggle session. We see Bill Kristol, Tim Miller, Sam Stein, Sarah Longwell, and J.V. Last commiserate over the unacceptable win by Trump with mopey results. Mr. Last weighed in with a hypothetical scenario that would have prevented this from happening, and his fever-dream level of cope is hilarious.
He proposes that Biden should have turned radical and taken steps such as packing the Supreme Court and making Washington D.C. a state to block Trump’s ascendancy. So his plan was to prevent authoritarianism by having Biden act more authoritarian.
Best of all, he declared this would have been deeply unpopular. So it would have been acceptable to defy the will of the people, which he is currently complaining about, all to stop Trump from re-entering the Oval Office. Just fabulous thinking on display.
Well, this happened.
Here is the @BulwarkOnline clan declaring that in order to have defeated Trump’s authoritarianism Joe Biden needed to…behave like an authoritarian.
The seething is tangible. pic.twitter.com/b3voxrL0pR— Lie-Able Sources (@LieAbleSources) November 7, 2024
Distinguished Public Service
In the ramp-up to the election, the Washington Post became embroiled in internal strife when the announcement came out that the paper would not issue an official endorsement for president. As the staffers lashed out and criticized their own publication, they failed to anticipate readers rising up to cancel their subscriptions in alarming numbers.
A sign of how bad this became was when one journalist detailed the cold reality that her own mother was among those walking away from the paper.
My mom just told me she cancelled her subscription to The Washington Post. She reads every one of my stories. It was a heartbreaking call.
I understand why she did it, but I asked her to reconsider. To anyone who has cancelled or is thinking about cancelling, here’s what I said:
— Caroline Kitchener (@CAKitchener) October 26, 2024
Distinguished Political Cartoons
In resorting to the tired narrative of America lapsing into a “Handmaid’s Tale” dystopian future, Luckovich managed to misfire. He had this image removed from his timeline after it was realized that, although he conveyed the message, as it is depicted he was suggesting to vote for Trump to avoid the nightmare condition.
Guessing that @mluckovichajc pulled this one from his timeline after realizing it was essentially displaying things under a Joe Biden administration. pic.twitter.com/0Lq2NoFWDX
— Brad Slager: CNN+ Lifetime Subscriber (@MartiniShark) November 9, 2024
Distinguished Local Reporting
In some pre-election coverage, we see the old maxim that too many in the press believe history began around the Obama administration. Looking at the prospect of Trump returning to the White House, this station declared it would be the first time we saw two non-concurrent terms.
Understandably this was taken down and the article edited once they became aware of Grover Cleveland’s presidential record.
This is the risk of having millennials and Gen-Z members on your staff. They think history began during the Barack Obama years. pic.twitter.com/DZcdNHkemB
— Lie-Able Sources (@LieAbleSources) November 6, 2024
