What Trevor Noah Got Desperately Wrong at the White House Correspondent's Dinner

[MN2theMax]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/05/trevor-noah-mistake-white-house-correspondents-dinner.html

*Snip

The most notable part of an event that has felt in recent years like a stale and hackneyed tradition—even before the former guy’s multi-year boycott—came when Daily Show host Trevor Noah stuck the landing as he closed out the evening with a gentle admonition to U.S. journalists. Noah ended the event with these words:

"Ask yourself this question: If Russian journalists who are losing their livelihoods… and their freedom for daring to report on what their own government is doing, if they had the freedom to write any words, to show any stories or to ask any questions, if they had, basically, what you have, would they be using it in the same way that you do?"

*Snip

Well. Illiberalism is nigh. It voted in 2016, it rampaged in the Capitol in 2021, it formed the basis of myriad new election restrictions in 2022, and it may well steal the election in 2024. It is dictating what children may read, what teachers may teach, how private companies may speak, how parents can raise their own children, and it’s conscripting citizen vigilantes as its lawful enforcers. We should report on that as though we are in Russia because, in real ways, many Americans are already experiencing similar levels of repression. Women in Texas have been in reproductive Russia since September of 2021. Freedom is a continuum and not a touchdown dance, and nearly everyone in media knows this. The problem isn’t so much that we in the press aren’t doing our jobs. It’s that we know nobody would come to watch a show about how now that the occupiers and election deniers have temporarily and mostly—though not entirely—vacated the Capitol, they’re actually still out there, preparing for the next attacks, that very little is being done to stop them, and that this is generally considered neither interesting nor news.

[calimary]

1. Good points!

VERY good points!

I particularly like the phrase “living in reproductive Russia”. MAN does that mail it!

[MN2theMax]

2. I liked this article because...

It reminded me of the persistence of Eric Boehlert in calling out the media shortcoming in reporting the actual news.
Good on Trevor Noah to pick up that torch and hold it up before an audience that needs to see the light.

[Evolve Dammit]

4. Excellent post. We are in deep shit. And 1/3 of us loves it and enable it. The 2/3 needs to condemn

it LOUDLY. They will burn it to the ground if we don't stop them. They are a sick fucking version of fascism and violence.

[LiberalLovinLug]

5. I found a few different quips he made that I thought were dumb

And were clearly made to appease those more right wing in the audience. Going off on the Cuomo brothers multiple times. Implying that Biden hasn't done anything. The implication that Fox was working for Republicans, but also MSNBC was working for Democrats in the same way. That they are equal opposites, no delineation of how one uses lies to attack, and the other doesn't need to.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. I don't think Noah did get that area "wrong", and certainly not "desperately"

The attendees at the dinner are the most powerful journalists, and also executives, in the American media, who actually can make choices about their content, rather than just have to follow what someone powerful above them says. So Lithwick's "first category error" doesn't look like Noah got it wrong, to me.

And because the attendees do have those choices, then the "second category error" - "that American democracy itself is not nearly as free as Noah implied", is their problem to report on. That "the U.S. media pays stunningly little sustained attention to the possible looming death of freedom and democracy in the U.S. because it’s vastly easier to seek to entertain than to document abstract creeping illiberalism at home", is partly the fault of those in that room, and they have the best chance of correcting it.