Tuesday afternoon, Politico ran a very good story about media and political attacks against Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and her response to the ongoing wildfires. The piece, by reporter Melanie Mason, points out that much of the criticism has been unfair and often baldface lies. It also notes that Bass’s public persona as a detail-oriented consensus builder has in part led to the perception that she’s not an action-oriented take-charge leader in this crisis. It’s one of the better discussion of Bass and the wildfires we’ve read, in addition of course to our own, ahem.
The money quote for the story comes from Rob Quan, an organizer with good-government nonprofit Unrig LA. Says Quan,
“Nationally, there’s just a pile-on. […] If you look at her replies [on social media] now, she could be posting a video of her literally running into a burning building and taking a child out of there, and people would still be replying ‘resign!’”
Mason’s piece is a smart, thoughtful look at how an accomplished politician is being dragged in the media, and how her own political instincts and strengths aren’t proving to be much help in countering the overwhelmingly negative coverage. Kind of like having a municipal water system that’s perfectly capable of handling building fires, but not designed to contain a fire hurricane made far more catastrophic by climate change. By all means, you should read it!
But because we are doing a Doktor of Rhetoric post today, we’re only going to discuss Mason’s very good reporting and analysis in the context of how Politico distorted its own goddamn coverage for the sake of adding more cheap shots to the shitstorm of belligerent bellyaching with which Bass is contending.
Later yesterday afternoon, Politico’s “California PM Playbook” column took Mason’s thoughtful, nuanced reporting and ran it through a bullshit filter, resulting in a column that mentions the pile-on of disinformation that Bass has faced, but ultimately paints Bass as responsible for her own unfair coverage, darn her.
California Playbook editor Lindsay Holden quotes and paraphrases Mason liberally, but hypes up the negatives almost to the exclusion of all else, leaving the reader with the impression that Bass, as Holden’s headline puts it, “has lost the plot.”
Mason depicts Bass as a competent leader whose substance-over-style political instincts aren’t necessarily a great match for a crisis where cable news and rightwing social media are driving the narrative:
Bass has also been hampered by instincts she honed as a deal-making legislator and coalition-building community activist. Never someone to actively seek the spotlight, her unflashy demeanor now comes off as uninspiring for people seeking a leader projecting command.
An unnamed Democratic consultant says that right now, LA needs a media hero, “someone to stand up in the middle of the Pacific Palisades or the middle of Sylmar or the middle of Hollywood every day and say, ‘This is our community, and we will rebuild.’”
The consultant added, “I want her to show some emotion, that she’s tapping into the fear and anxiety that so many people feel, and not reflect this soft brand of optimism that she’s been known for.”
Soft optimism bad, Henry V filtered through Independence Day good. But Mason also notes that after the widespread devastation of the first horrible hours, when high winds kept water bombers grounded and blew the fires out of control,
firefighters have been remarkably successful in halting additional damage — despite new fires cropping up throughout the week.
“All of those could have been massive conflagrations had they expanded, and they didn’t,” said Doug Herman, a Democratic strategist who works with Bass.
That note doesn’t make it into Holden’s version, which instead seems to be cheering on style, and the hell with substance. After noting that Elon Musk’s attacks on Bass are “often half-baked or outright false,” Holden adds in an anecdote that wasn’t in Mason’s piece, bizarrely framing a dishonest video clip as somehow one more example of Bass’s “painfully poor messaging strategy” (a phrase Mason does not use):
The latest example came Tuesday afternoon, when CBS News sent out a misleading tweet suggesting its reporter asked Bass whether she “regrets” taking an overseas trip while the wildfires erupted. The accompanying video clip showed Bass answering “No.”
In fact, CBS’ Jonathan Vigliotti asked Bass whether, looking back, she still would’ve taken the diplomatic trip to Ghana.
CBS News subsequently revised the tweet to get the question right, and added a note to clarify that Bass was saying no, on reflection she wouldn’t have taken the trip. For all the good it did.
Here’s where we lost our patience with the Playbook piece: Holden went right ahead and insisted that Bass had fucked up:
The episode served as a mini illustration of Bass’ problems — specious information, followed by her own unwillingness to provide a fuller explanation, let alone a broader acknowledgement of her mistake. The narrative about her trip might have been put to bed last week, but Bass’ resistance to engage on it has allowed her enemies to continue painting her as an absent and ineffective leader.
Apparently, Bass should have anticipated that CBS would send a tweet distorting what she said, and she should have pre-debunked it, too. Shame on her! She really has lost the plot, all right.
Perhaps Mason should update her own piece with a close look at how her own outlet indulged in the kind of bullshit she was analyzing, but that might be a little too meta. And god knows Meta has enshittified itself plenty already.
[Politico’s worthwhile story / Politico Playbook’s shitty story]
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