Annals of Artificial Intelligence

 

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If you can't think of anything nice to say, ask ChatGPT:

Me: Please summarize Jeff Gerth's article on "The Press Versus the President" in Columbia Journalism Review.

Bot: Jeff Gerth's article "The Press Versus the President" in Columbia Journalism Review examines the strained relationship between the media and former President Donald Trump. Gerth argues that Trump's presidency has highlighted the need for journalists to be persistent, vigilant, and independent in their reporting.

Gerth notes that Trump's attacks on the media have been a constant feature of his presidency, with the president regularly referring to the press as "fake news" and "the enemy of the people." Gerth argues that these attacks are part of a broader strategy to undermine the credibility of the media and to control the narrative of his presidency.

Despite these attacks, Gerth contends that the media has largely risen to the challenge of covering Trump's presidency, producing a steady stream of investigative reporting that has uncovered numerous scandals and abuses of power. Gerth argues that this reporting has been essential in holding Trump accountable and in ensuring that the public is informed about the actions of their government.

Gerth also notes that the media has faced significant challenges in covering Trump's presidency, including the president's tendency to lie and to manipulate the truth. Gerth argues that journalists must be vigilant in fact-checking Trump's statements and in holding him accountable when he makes false or misleading claims.

Overall, Gerth's article emphasizes the important role that the media plays in a democratic society, particularly in holding those in power accountable. While Trump's attacks on the media have been a significant challenge, Gerth argues that the media has largely risen to the occasion, producing reporting that is essential for a well-informed citizenry.

Actually Gerth does not argue that Trump's attacks on "fake news" and the "enemy of the people" are part of a strategy to accomplish anything: he argues that Trump is justified by the misconduct of the journalists, who, far from blaming Trump, have no one to blame but themselves for the public's mistrust:

From the Gerth to the Moon

 

Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon in the Greek animated version by Angelos Spartalis.

Jeff Gerth opens his massive report on "The Press Versus the President" (24,000 words, according to David Corn of Mother Jones) novelistically:

The end of the long inquiry into whether Donald Trump was colluding with Russia came in July 2019, when Robert Mueller III, the special counsel, took seven, sometimes painful, hours to essentially say no.

“Holy shit, Bob Mueller is not going to do it,” is how Dean Baquet, then the executive editor of the New York Times, described the moment his paper’s readers realized Mueller was not going to pursue Trump’s ouster.

Actually it was Baquet (speaking that August to a group of staffers angry at the paper's restrictions on words like "racist" and "lie") who was fictionalizing: it doesn't seem particularly important, but the hearings in which Mueller testified under subpoena on July 24 2019, House Judiciary in the morning, House Intelligence in the afternoon, were not when the New York Times readership learned that the special prosecutor would not be prosecuting the president; they'd learned that exactly four months earlier. March 24, when Attorney General Barr issued his four-page report on Mueller's report. Mueller's report itself was released to the public, in redacted form, on May 18. What Mueller said no to on July 24 was any questions, more or less, asking him to say anything beyond what was in the report—he was really determined not to say anything that wasn't already public. 

Gerth of a Nation

Mae Marsh hearing no evil in Birth of a Nation (1915).

Why Trump was forced to fire the FBI director, according to Jeff Gerth in the august pages of the Columbia Jourmalism Review, of all places:

Trump, by the spring of 2017, was more than uneasy with Comey. In one of his chats [the ones that so alarmed Comey that he memorialized them in detail after each meeting, but Gerth doesn't mention that, or the way Trump kept asking Comey for a statement of personal loyalty] , he told the director his policies were “bad” for Russia because he wanted “more oil and more nukes” and the FBI inquiry was creating a “cloud” over his dealings with foreign leaders, according to Comey’s notes.

Because the investigation was getting in the way of his plans to get more oil and nukes. Which would be bad for Russia. Comey was actually preventing him from being bad for Russia. This had to stop! 

Finally, he had enough. Trump met with senior officials, and his deputy counsel told him that firing Comey would prolong, not curb, the FBI investigation and possibly result in the appointment of a special counsel, according to lawyers briefed on the meeting.

“The president acknowledged” the dire prognosis in the meeting, according to William Barr, who, as attorney general in 2019, oversaw the end of the Mueller inquiry. But the president didn’t care, declaring, according to Barr: “I’m still going to fire the son of a bitch.”

Barr wasn't a senior official at that point, and wasn't at the meeting he's reporting, of course, any more than he was at the meeting Trump had with Foreign Minister Lavrov and Ambassador Kislyak when Trump explained he'd had to fire the "nutjob" because, "I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off." 

Gerth displaying the bear trap mind  with which he pinned down Bill Clinton's criminality in his Whitewater investigation 30 years ago. Well, he didn't actually pin down Bill Clinton's criminality, but that was his editors' fault:

Gerth claims that editors, without his knowledge, rewrote his first and best-known Whitewater article and saddled it with factual errors. The unsettling revelation, buried in a Her Way endnote, raises even more questions about Gerth, the Times, and their Whitewater misadventure. (The great Eric Boehlert, back in 2007) 

Now Gerth is jumping on The Times itself the way he jumped on Clinton back in the day, evidently in the hope of providing a road map for the House Select Committee on the Jordanization of Government when the put the paper under the microscope, but just like the early road map (for House Judiciary, I guess), it's a map of leaps that don't add up, and seem to be avoiding particular territories as much as seeking them.

So I'll be fisking more of it later.