Digest 02/21/2022

Life on the drug beat, Medium-ers to their own rescue, and more.

LIFE ON THE DRUG BEAT

In 1980, the Washington Post ran a harrowing story about an 8-year-old Washington D.C boy addicted to heroin. The story described “needle marks freckling the baby-smooth skin of his thin, brown arms.” The reporter’s assistant managing editor, Bob Woodward, submitted the story for a Pulitzer Prize, and it won. There was only one problem: the 8-year-old boy didn’t exist. The story was fabricated. 

In the 1990s, the media sparked a racist panic about “crack babies” that became a pretext to severely punish Black women who used drugs. In the days of underground raves, the idea that MDMA melted holes in your brain was reported as scientific fact. Based on dubious science and moral panic, then Senator Joe Biden drafted a bill known as the RAVE Act (Reducing Americans’ Vulnerability to Ecstasy) to punish concert promoters as drug dealers. 

When it comes to drug reporting, the media has astounding power to spur misguided and reactionary policy at all levels of government. Long before “fake news” and “alternative facts” entered the media’s lexicon, journalism about drugs and addiction was the province of hyperbole, pseudoscience, and outright lies. 

I’ve been on the drug beat for over five years now, and the experience has turned me into something of a crusader, trying to dislodge drug journalism from the sensational crime vertical and inject (no pun intended) empirical rigor and moral humanity into news coverage. Now, during a historic overdose crisis, problems in drug journalism persist. Seemingly every week,  a police officer “overdoses” on fentanyl from merely touching it ——which is not a thing. Or some menacing drug dealers lacing marijuana with fentanyl — also not a thing. Stories about the evils of opioids do not quote doctors who treat pain or disabled patients who regain function thanks to pain relief. 

Just this month, right wing media stirred up a racist smear about the federal government funding the distribution of “crack pipes.” The pressure campaign worked and the White House caved, assuring some of the cruelest people that their tax dollars will not be spent on “crack pipes.” And like clockwork, media coverage allowed politicians to draft bogus legislation with a ridiculous acronym. Senators Marco Rubio and Joe Manchin teamed up to pass the PIPES Act (Preventing Illicit Paraphernalia for Exchange Systems… whatever that means), barring the federal government from funding the purchase of crack pipes and syringes.   

What accounts for such flawed coverage? Or what gives with the lack of compassion for those struggling with a mental health condition? It’s not simply the case that some reporters are just bad at their jobs. I think the problem is much bigger than individuals. 

READ THE REST: “For one, most news outlets do not have health and science reporters dedicated to drugs. NPR hired its first ever “addiction correspondent” in 2019.”

Life on the Drug Beat

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MEDIUM IS BEING MEAN AGAIN

The company, which maddened the media industry in the spring when it gave buyouts to editors of its publications as an apparent reaction to employees’ vote to unionize, sent an email to many of its Partner Program members which said, due to “new eligibility and activity requirements for writers,” writers with fewer than 100 followers “may be removed from the Partner Program.” The email gives the deadline of March 2nd and, if removed from the Partner Program, a program members paid to be a part of that allows writers to be paid for their work, “Your existing metered posts will be un-metered and you’ll no longer be eligible to earn on them.” 

These new guidelines were sent to members in August but, when the email went out on February 15, writers began to scramble. What happened next was a follow-back party across many social media channels. Flapjaw, the Slackjaw’s Facebook group, for example, had a thread with nearly 400 comments in which Medium creators posted their profiles and pledged to follow each other. Members saw their followers double or triple overnight, getting them over the 100-follower threshold and staving off execution. That is, until Medium changes their policies yet again. 

While writers are aware this is a tactic by the dying star that is Medium to get us to engage with this terrible platform, writers — especially comedy writers who often don’t get paid much for their work across the board — will do anything for passive income, even if it’s only $0.17 a month.  – Laura Wheatman Hill

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EVERYTHING ELSE

— Nick Kristof, who quit the job a million girls would want at the New York Times to run for governor of Oregon, will not be allowed to run for governor of Oregon because a court found, crucially, he did not live in Oregon quite enough.

— The AP will “will hire about 20 journalists based in Africa, Brazil, India and the U.S.” as part of their climate change news initiative. 

— Axios’ Sara Fischer reports that the Financial Times made it to one million digital-only subscribers in 2021 (a target also hit in December by The Guardian) and that digital makes up 46 per cent of the paper’s revenue.

— Public media outlet WHYY is hemorrhaging staff. Of thirty-four journalists who signed an open letter last year complaining of poor pay, mismanagement and a failure to uphold public radio ideals, 13 have since left. 

— Bari Weiss’ Substack contributor Nellie Bowles wrote about being victimized by the non-existent crime wave, specifically about losing her Honda to wily thieves who took the keys from their secret location inside the car. 

— The Baltimore Sun has issued a wide-ranging apology for its role in anti-Black racism, noting that “we bore witness to many injustices across generations, and while we worked to reverse many of them, some we made worse;” naming the legacy of slavery and segregation attached to its founder; and that the paper has “frequently employed prejudice as a tool of the times,” including a bullet pointed list of the aforementioned.