I generally check out Althouse’s blog every few days because 1) she’s a smart and independent moderate, and a source of objective and unbiased takes on political events and media coverage of them 2) she’s a retired law professor with time on her hands, and thus finds possible ethics topics that I might normally miss and 3) she’s really, really weird, with obsessions about word usage, Bob Dylan, her blog’s tags (almost nobody uses the tags, reading her blog or this one), Saturday Night Live, drawings of rats (thankfully expired) and, lately, Grok. But she wouldn’t even add Ethics Alarms to her list of useful blog links (I asked), then decided not to have any blog links.
Well, I’m smart; I’m not dumb like everybody says and I want respect! If she bothered to check in on EA, she would have had an easy answer to what was a blog topic for her this week: “Help me think of a term to apply to articles like this, something that expresses why it bothers me so much, was her headline. It’s not ‘fake news,’ because it’s not even news.” The article was the Washington Post’s “Trump leans into isolation as challenges mount at home.”
Well to begin with, it is “fake news,” Counsellor. It is a news item presented by a journalist as news, and Ann herself agrees it isn’t news: that’s fake news by definition. Now I have regrets that I never completed my promised compendium of all the varieties of fake news engaged in by our biased and corrupt news media. I know I promised that a long time ago, and yes, I still think it’s relevant and important. “Fake news” is one of Trump’s most valuable additions to our lexicon, and he’s had several.
Ann’s example from the Post is a particularly annoying sub-category of fake news I term “psychic news.” It is on display when a reporter, in this case Naftali Bendavid, presumes to know what a prominent person is thinking or feeling, and reports it as fact. Psychic news targeting Trump outnumbers the tactic being used against any other figure by about 100 to 1.
The objective of this species of fake news is to mount a collateral attack on Trump’s policies and actions by attributing them to what the Left sees as bad motives. This article wants us to believe that his administration “is redoubling its efforts to blame an array of outside forces for America’s problems and enact policies that block those influences from crossing U.S. borders” because the President is desperate to avoid accountability for his own failures of leadership.
This is an article by a reporter, not a pundit, and he is supposed to be conveying facts. Instead, he delivered an opinion piece that says “I hate this guy because he’s a Republican, a bigot and white supremacist, and now he’s targeting Somalis because he feels the walls closing in.” The reporter’s evidence? What his psychic abilities tell him the President is feeling.
Fake news. Psychic news.
Or Ann can just tag the story as I would, with “biased journalism,” Axis of Unethical Conduct,” or “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias.”
Ethics Alarms 
” 1) she’s a smart and independent moderate, and a source of objective and unbiased takes on political events and media coverage of them“
She’s also a decades long resident of the 77 Square Miles Surrounded By A Sea Of Variety, encircled by the Tofu Curtain.
Her keen observations, and more so the commentary they inspire, provide a faint flicker of hope that not everyone in my Home Town is Nucking Futs!
On the subject of tags, you could do a Land Office Business by tagging Madison/Dane County and chronicling the staggering amount of LaLaLoopyLoonyLeftyLand lunacy offered up as critical thought and responsible municipal governance.
PWS
These “Trump’s mentally ill and disturbed and needs to get help” statements by politicians and media are annoying and tiresome. I think it’s women in politics that is the source of this baloney. I think Hillary started it. Or maybe the Dems started it with Richard Nixon saying he was mentally disturbed.
Of course, Hillary got her start investigating Watergate.
Emotional/mental afflictions are common in the general population (most people experience this in their lifetime, the most common being anxiety and/or depression in response to stressful life events); no reason to believe they would be less common among those who become president.
I think the primary problem here is not the recognition that many people (including presidents) deal with these challenges. Instead I would say the primary problem is presumption that people can’t function in their roles because they are dealing with one of these challenges. Abraham Lincoln pretty clearly struggled with depression and was also (according to most historians, I believe? JM will correct me if not) one of our most effective presidents.
Did a little quick search of the interwebs and found this abstract:
Numerous historical accounts suggest the presence of mental illness in US Presidents, but no systematic review has been undertaken for all holders of this office. We reviewed biographical sources regarding mental illness in 37 US Presidents from 1776 to 1974. Material was extracted by one of the authors and given to experienced psychiatrists for independent review of the correspondence of behaviors, symptoms, and medical information in source material to DSM-IV criteria for Axis I disorders. Levels of confidence were given for each diagnosis. Eighteen (49%) Presidents met criteria suggesting psychiatric disorder: depression (24%), anxiety (8%), bipolar disorder (8%), and alcohol abuse/dependence (8%) were the most common.
Davidson JR, Connor KM, Swartz M. Mental illness in U.S. Presidents between 1776 and 1974: a review of biographical sources. J Nerv Ment Dis. 2006 Jan;194(1):47-51. doi: 10.1097/01.nmd.0000195309.17887.f5. PMID: 16462555.
None of which has anything to do with what my comment was addressing.
Sorry the connection wasn’t clear. You seemed to be contemplating the history of mental illness in presidents — for example, that’s how I read “maybe the Dems started it with Richard Nixon saying he was mentally disturbed.”
My comment is also about the history of mental illness in presidents– which goes back well before Richard Nixon.
The history of presidents is also one of the themes that is often addressed on this blog, so I guess I see it as more broadly relevant to this community.
I wasn’t attempting to be deliberately obtuse, if that was your interpretation?
I apologize if it seemed that way to you.
My thesis is that lefties, particularly women, have taken to very condescendingly saying their opponent needs to seek mental health treatment rather than responding to or trying to understand what their opponent is saying or why their opponent is proposing certain policies. I find it very touchy feely and completely ineffective.
Thanks for clarification.
Condescension is annoying regardless of what form it takes, methinks! And it makes sense that this approach would appeal to women — fake concern being a form of indirect (maintain deniability!) aggression.
Men of course have their own version… pretending that women are “hysterical” or “too emotional” as a way to avoid engaging on substance. I am NOT saying you do this BTW! — just commenting on gendered preferences for different styles of enacting condescension.
The Washington Post (and other news media) define analysis as a category separate from news and from opinion. The Post defines analysis as “… interpretation of the news based on evidence, including data, as well as anticipating how events might unfold based on past events”. Frankly, I don’t understand how it differs from opinion columns, nor do I understand why it is included in news sections. Analysis typically has a byline of at least one reporter, whereas news articles do not necessarily have them, and WAPO opinion articles do not. So, the term ‘fake news’ does not seem to apply to analysis.
Done well, analysis is useful. Done poorly, it devolves into flaky opinions, for which we do not seem to have a catchy name.
1. “Guessing” is not analysis.
2. If, as you agree, it’s not news reporting but is still in the news section, it’s fake news.
And, I guess that’s why they don’t call it the news section.
I’m super late to comment, but isn’t this type of speculative, not-really-news-just-my-opinion, make-up-a-story-to-fit-my-narrative journalism exactly what we have been fed as “actual news” for years? This is particularly true as it relates to President Trump.
I guess I’m not the least bit surprised that individuals, passing themselves off as reporters and maybe even paid as such, would attempt to read the mind of the President without ever interviewing him (or anyone even close to him), and then (miracle of miracles?) coming to a conclusion that fits a negative, left-wing characterization of him.
I wonder if they did the same during the Biden Administration. I’m guessing not, because I don’t recall seeing a lot of reporting that focused on policy and how it related to “The Wonkey Donkey” or “The Poky Little Puppy.”