Breaking news: Trump indicted
The big breaking news Tuesday evening was Donald Trump being indicted on four felony counts for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election and his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Special counsel Jack Smith told reporters, “The attack on our nation’s Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy. It was fueled by lies, lies by the defendant.”
In one of his posts on his Truth Social, Trump wrote, “Why didn’t they bring this ridiculous case 2.5 years ago? They wanted it right in the middle of my campaign, that’s why!”
In her Five-Minute Fix newsletter, The Washington Post’s Amber Phillips wrote, “He’s now got quite a list of indictments in various cases, but this is the big one, and it’s serious.”
She added, “Essentially, the indictment alleges that Trump orchestrated a subversion of democracy.”
New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker wrote, “What makes the indictment against Donald J. Trump on Tuesday so breathtaking is not that it is the first time a president has been charged with a crime or even the second. Mr. Trump already holds those records. But as serious as hush money and classified documents may be, this third indictment in four months finally gets to the heart of the matter, the issue that will define the future of American democracy.”
He added, “At the core of the United States of America vs. Donald J. Trump is no less than the viability of the system constructed in that summer in Philadelphia. Can a sitting president spread lies about an election and try to employ his government’s power to overturn the will of the voters without consequence? The question would have been unimaginable just a few years ago, but the Trump case raises the kind of specter more familiar in countries with histories of coups and juntas and dictators.”
Baker’s analysis lays out exactly how disturbing these charges are and what the future might hold.
I’ll have much more coverage in the days ahead, but here a few notable pieces until then:
Avoiding the news
Years ago — I’m talking 15 or so years ago — I was at a youth baseball practice for my youngest son. While talking to the parents of one of my son's teammates, I was asked what I did for a living. I said I worked for the local newspaper, the Tampa Bay Times. The father said, “Yeah, we don’t get the paper.”
I said, “Oh?”
And the wife said, “Yeah, the news is all so negative that we don’t want to hear about it.”
I just politely smiled and nodded. But deep down I was judging them for being ill-informed and irresponsible.
As it turns out, maybe they were just ahead of their time.
These days, news consumption has dropped because some previously-regular news consumers are avoiding the news. Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi wrote about this trend based on the latest research from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
The numbers tell an interesting tale: 38% of Americans in the survey say they sometimes or often avoid news. Meanwhile, the number of those who are “extremely” or “very interested” in the news continues to dwindle. In 2015, that number was around 67%. Today, it’s 49% — the first time that number has fallen below 50% in the survey’s brief history.
Farhi writes, “Researchers say ‘news avoidance’ could be a response to an age of hyper-information, when updates from the outside world flow not just from every TV set and printing press but also out of our own pockets via smartphones. Digital media has made news ubiquitous and instantly available from thousands of sources representing every ideology, geography and language. And much of it, people say, drives feelings of depression, anger, anxiety or helplessness.”
As Farhi notes, the topics that send people fleeing from the news are often associated with the divisive politics in the country, particularly since 2016. (Hmm, what happened that year?) The topics that can cause anger or depression include political views on issues and rights involving race, gender and sexual preference, as well as things such as gun violence and presidential elections — both past and future.
As one once-avid news consumer told Farhi, “What can I do about it? Nothing you do gives any control.” Well, Farhi writes, what can one do other than laying the newspaper aside, turning off the TV and going for a walk?
Cable news ratings are down, as is web traffic for major news outlets, including places such as The New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.
News avoidance certainly is playing a role in that, according to the research.
Check out Farhi’s story for more.
Meta pulls plug on news in Canada
Meta announced Tuesday that it will remove news availability on its platforms in Canada. This is in response to Canada’s government passing the Online News Act, Bill C-18, which requires big tech giants such as Google and Meta to pay media outlets for news content they share or otherwise repurpose on their platforms.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, put a statement on its website announcing the latest move. The statement — signed by Rachel Curran, Meta's head of public policy in Canada — said, in part, “For Canadian news outlets this means: News links and content posted by news publishers and broadcasters in Canada will no longer be viewable by people in Canada. We are identifying news outlets based on legislative definitions and guidance from the Online News Act.”
The move is supposed to take place immediately, but the changes are expected to take a few weeks to implement.
Curran wrote, “In the future, we hope the Canadian government will recognize the value we already provide the news industry and consider a policy response that upholds the principles of a free and open internet.”
Meta says this move is permanent, but is it?
As the CBC’s Darren Major wrote, “Bill C-18 is modeled on a similar law in Australia, the country that first forced digital companies to pay for the use of news content. Meta, known as Facebook at the time, temporarily blocked Australians from sharing news stories on its platform. The Australian government and the tech company ended up striking a deal and the news ban was lifted.”
On the mark
