For our Future of News project, we set ourselves the goal of “Humanizing the news”. Our efforts took the form of a series of iterations between experimenting with and implementing innovations in how news stories are sourced and presented. The slides we presented in Wednesday’s class are here.

Why the rush? Arkansas’s primary method of execution, like the other 30 states which have capital punishment on their statute books, is the three-drug lethal injection protocol. Securing these drugs has proved increasingly difficult in recent years, due to shortages caused by political and regulatory pressure making pharmaceutical companies reluctant to provide the drugs for the purposes of capital punishment.

Arkansan governor Asa Hutchinson sprung into action this month, scheduling the eight executions mere days before the expiry date on the state’s only available sedative, midazolam, elapses at the end of April. The third execution, of convicted murderer Marcel Williams, only took place after a last-minute legal scramble to halt it failed on Monday evening. The reason? That evening’s first scheduled execution, of Jack Jones, may have been botched, after correctional facility officers tried and failed to insert an IV line into the obese prisoner’s neck.

This most recent episode only serves to underline the increasingly farcical nature of capital punishment in the US. Lawyers for Williams argued that his execution might be unconstitutional on the grounds of “cruel and unusual punishment” – but it is increasingly obvious that the whole system of capital punishment has elements of unusual cruelty. Jones’s execution reportedly saw him moving his lips and gulping for air after the sedative was applied, amounting to what Williams’ lawyers claimed was “torturous and inhumane.”

What action can you take against this inhumane system of state-sponsored murder? Several organizations are fighting to abolish the death penalty across the nation. The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty works to mobilize the 90 million Americans who say the death penalty is wrong. You can add your name to the growing movement by taking the coalition’s pledge. The group also offers resources for contacting your elected officials, and engage with community organizations like faith groups.

Amnesty International is also working to put an end to the death penalty around the world. One current campaign seeks to halt the return of the death penalty in the Philippines, an issue currently in front of the country’s Senate. The International Commission Against the Death Penalty is similarly working to put an end to the practice around the world, and provides useful resources on its website, albeit with fewer calls to direct action.

Yet as with so many other issues, from climate change to nuclear non-proliferation, preventing the death penalty around the world – and especially in China, which with over 1,000 executions a year may account for half the global total – would be much easier were it prohibited in the US.

Change starts at home – and if you live in one of the thirty one with capital punishment on the statute, consider contacting your local representative. No politician wants to be seen as “weak on crime”, and murderers and rapists are one of the more problematic constituencies to advocate for. But this is all the more reason why demonstrating your support for prohibition is important. Almost 3,000 people languish on death row in the United States, and fully 158 death row inmates have been exonerated since capital punishment was reintroduced in 1973. Ultimately, it comes down to this: only by putting an end to capital punishment can you be sure that no person will ever be put to death for a crime they didn’t commit.

Political unpredictability has continued apace in 2017, and France’s presidential election represents an early test of whether the nationalistic tremors of 2016 will continue to haunt liberal democracy in its heartlands. One thing’s for sure: no-one can confidently predict the results of this contest. But to borrow a phrase, there are some known unknowns to brush up on ahead of time.

How does France elect a president?

Presidential elections in France are a two-step process, with the top two candidates from this Sunday’s first round progressing to a head-to-head run-off a fortnight later – which means that, whatever happens, we won’t know who’ll become France’s next president on Sunday, but we know who won’t. The two-stage system aside, the process is quite straightforward – the candidates with the largest vote totals progress.

So who’s in the running?

In recent years, two main parties have dominated French politics: the left-wing Socialists, and the center-right Republicans. The current president is Socialist François Hollande, who announced last year that he would not seek re-election, in large part due to staggeringly low approval ratings, which hit an eye-popping low of 4% (not a typo!) late last year.

As in any election without the incumbent running, the field is wide open this year – albeit to an extent unprecedented in French politics, for several reasons. First, with or without Hollande, France’s Socialist party is in disarray: similar to Democrats in the US and the UK’s Labour Party, it is riven by in-fighting between left wing forces and more centrist impulses.

This has served to fragment the electorate. The official Socialist candidate, Benoît Hamon, is struggling under the weight of his predecessor’s unpopularity. Meanwhile, two former Socialist ministers, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Emmanuel Macron, have each seized chunks of the party’s traditional vote from the left and the right with their own new movements, Unsubmissive France and En Marche!, respectively.

The right wing has also splintered. The National Front, led by Marine Le Pen – the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, who scored a place in the run-off election in 2002 – has seized on antipathy towards Muslim immigrants to lead many first-round polls this year. Meanwhile François Fillon, the Republican candidate, is riven by allegations of financial impropriety relating to salaries given to members of his family, which have threatened to upend his candidacy.

OK, so it’s a broad field. But who’s going to win?

It’s very hard to predict who will make it through to the run-off – let alone win – but right now there are four viable candidates who, polls suggest, each clustered at between 18% and 23% of the vote. Mélenchon, with a radically leftist agenda, has been gaining recently at the expense of Hamon, and is running at around 18%, for what would be a close-fought fourth. Fillon has resisted calls – even from among his own party – to drop out, and his support seems to have stabilized, as he is currently running in a close third. Macron and Le Pen, meanwhile, have been trading the lead for the last few weeks, with each averaging around 23% of the vote.

The state of the French presidential polls at the time of writing. (Wikipedia)

The results of the run-off will depend, of course, on who makes it through. As things stand, one candidate – Macron – would win his head-to-head with each of the other three viable candidates, while another – Le Pen – would lose all of hers. (Mélenchon beats Fillon in the least-likely match-up.) But polling the run-off accurately is difficult while other candidates remain in the race, particularly when three out of the four leading candidates represent parties who have never won the presidency. In particular, if Fillon continues his comeback and makes it through to the run-off against Le Pen, the achingly familiar prospect of an experienced but scandal-plagued establishment candidate losing to a xenophobic outsider seems plausible.

How important is this election?

In a word, very. In constitutional terms, the French presidency represents something of a middle way between a mostly-symbolic head of state like the German presidency, and the powerful executive in the American system. Compared with America, periods of “cohabitation” – where one party controls parliament while another occupies the presidency – have been relatively rare, and in these instances, the president tends to take a back seat.

But one area in which French presidents have the most control is in foreign affairs, and France’s election this year represents, in a certain sense, another referendum on the European Union. Only the far-right Le Pen has vowed to leave the Euro currency, but both she and Mélenchon have adopted the fateful promise made by Britain’s David Cameron to renegotiate France’s relationship with the EU and put the resulting settlement to a formal referendum vote.

Meanwhile, Le Pen and Russian President Vladimir Putin have been open about their mutual respect, and Fillon is also notably more comfortable with Russia than other Republican figures – while Macron, the only avowedly pro-European candidate has been hit with a barrage of cyberattacks and fake news. Again all this sounds familiar, perhaps that’s because it is.

Both politically and geographically, France is much more central to the European project than Britain ever was, so a rebuke by voters would represent a much more existential threat to the Union – creating precisely the kind of instability that Russia’s Putin is said to want.

What else is there to know?

The polls are changing daily, and the election is now too close to call, according per multiple outlets. While this uncertainty creates volatility, in everything from markets to geopolitics, at least pundits and the public alike are more prepared for multiple outcomes than they were on the mornings of June 24 and November 9, 2016, when British and American voters created political earthquakes. It’s always useful to know what you don’t know.

Though the categories celebrating journalism have shifted somewhat over the years, the Pulitzers have long recognized quality reporting at all levels, from the local to the international. So what can analysis of who won the awards tell us about the geographic spread of successful journalism?

For this assignment I analyzed where four different categories of Pulitzers were awarded over the course of the last century. First, I looked at the Pulitzer for Local Investigative Specialized Reporting, a category awarded since 1964. Scraping the data from a list on Wikipedia, I calculated the number of awards given to titles in each U.S. state, and used the visualization tool Datawrapper to display the results:

backup link: //datawrapper.dwcdn.net/1rbUv/2/

23 out of 50 states have seen a title win a Pulitzer for local reporting – a decent geographic spread. Next I looked at the prizes for National and International Reporting respectively:

backup links: //datawrapper.dwcdn.net/399c2/2/

//datawrapper.dwcdn.net/kE4ZQ/2/

As these charts show, larger states have tended to dominate the National and International categories, which makes sense given the consolidation of resources in large bureaus, particularly in New York and Washington. For international reporting especially, New York dwarfs all other states, accounting for well more than half of all International Pulitzers.

Yet the Public Interest category, displayed below, shows much more geographic diversity. Though New York and California, as large states, still lead the way with 10 prizes each, Putlizers for work in the public interest have been awarded to fully 31 states plus DC, and states like North Carolina (6 awards) and Missiouri (4) have been frequently recognized.

backup link: //datawrapper.dwcdn.net/esVb3/1/

This analysis suggests that while major titles like the New York Times and Washington Post have long lead the way with their hard-hitting reporting at the national and international levels, for a century now, newspapers at every level and in a majority of states have performed award-winning journalism in the public interest. These local titles, exposing municipal corruption and state-level scandal, are the backbone of American journalism and – facing the most danger from the loss of advertising revenue and corporate consolidation – are most in need ongoing financial support.

https://fold.cm/read/JoshCowls/debunking-realdonaldtrump-Lt3Pmduy

First, there was food, and lots of it:

6 slow-cooked hrs later: 3-bean veggie chilli w/a lil cheese, lots of lime, & tortilla chips & avocado. #nomnom #snowday #stella2017 pic.twitter.com/od4AvXpUee

— Christina M. Knowles (@bostonpolitica) March 14, 2017

#Snowday = homemade soup! Now off to shovel pic.twitter.com/zydRi2Aqm0

— Marcelle Galluzzo (@mg_d) March 14, 2017

https://twitter.com/Katelynvanpeltt/status/841770516360921089

And there were carefully dressed toddlers:

First snow for this guy! Randy? #CharlesTownWV #7inches #snowday @weatherchannel @nbcwashington @AMHQ pic.twitter.com/8vmR5e0RcX

— Haley Gargan (@h_gargan) March 14, 2017

Staying warm in our STH jackets while the blizzard hits! #NERevs #needinfantsize #snowday pic.twitter.com/ORwZOtbQJ5

— Mr Brandon Schaeffer (@TheSchaeffer) March 14, 2017

But pretty soon, folks realized that the blizzard was not as boisterous as promised. The Weather Channel caught some of the flak:

Watching The Weather Channel scramble to tell us why they messed up the NY City area snow forecast #StellaBlizzard #snowday

— OHellzNo (@OHellzNo) March 14, 2017

… as did the entire notion of global warming:

Roses are red
Snow is white
Global warming is fake
So wake up and be quiet. #snowdaypic.twitter.com/5T6wgBrvsV

— Tennessee (@TEN_GOP) March 14, 2017

… and some even thought that weather reports smelt like fake news.

#Snowday: When the Weather Channel says there's going to be a massive blizzard and it snows 6 inches. pic.twitter.com/78K8cBrljH

— Elizabeth® (@MissLizzyNJ) March 14, 2017

Perhaps not surprisingly, this was not the only time that Donald Trump made an appearance on the hashtag. His supporters were out in force:

This blizzard is crazy. The Snowflakes are HUGE. I haven't seen snowflakes that big since that anti-Trump rally #StellaBlizzard #snowday

— Alkaline Bro (@DrJerryTFM) March 14, 2017

… as were several of his detractors.

https://twitter.com/copywronger/status/841633138862374912

It's a #snowday! Can't protest, but you CAN join the #IdesofTrump! Cut postcards from file folders, write stuff, &mail it to Trump tomorrow!

— Ellen W (@EllenBookstore) March 14, 2017

https://twitter.com/Blurred_Trees/status/829747456095186945

Twitter has always been one of the more politically conscious social networks. But in the age of the Trump administration, politics seems to pervade even the most seemingly neutral subjects.

It seems that politics is never far from tweeters’ minds – whatever the weather.

Every political discussion since November 9th has probably started with the same question: how did this happen? Bouie deserves credit for pointing to the possibility of Donald Trump winning the Republican nomination earlier than other observers, citing the intensity of support at his early rallies, and how easily Trump survived the criticism leveled at John McCain shortly after announcing his candidacy. Trump also benefited, Bouie argued, from a crowded Republican field and the “zombie candidacy” of cash-rich but vote-poor Jeb Bush.

But Bouie, along with so many others, gave Trump scant chance of winning the general election against Hillary Clinton, pointing to the seemingly durable ‘Obama coalition’ of voters. Bouie admitted that he wished he’d more taken seriously Trump’s chances. The media in general, Bouie argued, were confident enough in a Clinton win to subject her to severe scrutiny and merely focus on the “spectacle” of Trump — it was “Trump saying crazy things, versus emails.”

Another reason Trump succeeded — and one which might have serious implications going forward — is that so-called ‘Never Trumpers’ stayed reasonably quiet. Bouie pointed to the several crises that the US two-party system has suffered through yet survived, and suggested that the Republican party is more likely to morph than collapse, with ethno-nationalism emerging at its core.

Bouie and Mnookin also discussed the challenges discussing race and dealing with racial inequality — even between those who might agree. Bouie highlighted the differing forms of interaction that take place between people of different races in the south as compared to the north — the liberal northeast of the country experiences its own perhaps more subtle form of segregation and separation which can color attempts at crossing racial divides.

Bouie, at a mere 29 years old, has already emerged as one of the leading observers of American politics in our current volatile era. Both Bouie’s firm sense of American history and his own experience undergird both his articulate prose and the important, impactful perspective on display this evening.

That changed after election day. I realized that I had — like the vast majority of the journalists and commentators ensconced in the Twitter bubble — missed some of the ‘real stories’ of the election, including the anger felt by ordinary Americans towards Washington elites, not least Hillary Clinton. It also helped that things temporarily quietened down in the dying days of the Obama administration. Suddenly, I became absorbed in long-form think pieces, photo essays, and articles about topics — gasp — other than politics.

But I’ve been backsliding of late. Politics has heated back up to the temperature and tenor of the campaign, and Twitter in particular has become proportionately more compelling. So this self-tracking assignment arrived at the right time, and I’m pleased to note that the insights it generated have served to shake me awake from my subconscious relapse.

I use three devices for information and communication: my iPhone, my iPad and my laptop. Despite the power of the Apple ecosystem and the cross-platform nature of most social media sites, I try to reserve the different devices for different things: my phone for quick hits of information as well as communication, plus podcasts on-the-go; my tablet for more relaxed, mostly ‘read-only’ consumption, and my laptop for longer-form writing and coding. Because of these different patterns of use, I wanted to make sure I could track my media diet across each of these devices – what I ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner, if you will.

First off, my iPhone. In my definition of what constitutes media, I excluded small-group communication apps like Whatsapp and Facebook’s Messenger, as well as email. I was only left with five apps relevant to media consumption: four social networks, and Downcast, my favorite podcast app. Downcast dwarfed the competition, accounting for fully ten hours of listening. (My podcasts of choice this week: Pod Save America; the West Wing Weekly; The New Yorker’s Politics and More; 99% Invisible; the Bill Simmons podcast with Malcolm Gladwell; and a conversation between Tyler Cowen and Fuschia Dunlop.) Besides podcasts, the distribution of time spent on social media was skewed towards Twitter, while Snapchat lived up to its reputation as the most rapid form of social media engagement:

My iPad painted a different picture. It seems I actually do use many of the mainstream news app I have installed, including the New York Times, the Guardian, the Economist, and the Times of London. The absolute time involved wasn’t enormous – the New York Times was my favorite news source with 102 minutes across the week – and was still dwarfed by YouTube (which I use for its British radio archives) and Netflix (some of my favorite shows this week: Santa Clarita Diet, Midnight Diner, Chef’s Table and Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown.) I certainly used Twitter on my iPad as well, but much less than traditional news sources overall:

Finally, assessing media use on my laptop was a little tricker, since almost all media is consumed through Google Chrome, as opposed to brand-specific apps. Helpfully, the laptop-tracking app RescueTime does a pretty good job categorizing each website you visit. Overall, I used the web on my laptop for News/Opinion and Social Networking slightly more than other more defensible purposes like Reference (mostly Wikipedia) or Software Development (mostly StackOverflow). Happily though, the absolute time I spent on these wasn’t too large: 108 minutes over the course of the week on News and Opinion, and 100 minutes on Social Networking.

Drilling down into these categories, the News and Opinion section is actually a little misleading: fully 70 of the 108 minutes was spent on Medium, primarily writing my blog rather than reading others. Beyond that, the BBC emerges as my most loyal destination for web-based news, clocking nearly 15 minutes, and I spent ten minutes getting distracted by BuzzFeed. I glanced only fleetingly at other news sites. My social media usage on other devices replicated on my laptop, with another hour and a quarter spent on Twitter, and a little over 20 minutes on Facebook. Regrettably, RescueTime doesn’t track time spent listening to music on the Spotify app, so this isn’t comparable to the podcast listening stats noted above.

Overall, analysis of my media diary suggests that I’m having some success using different devices for different purposes, in particular getting some news from traditional sources on my iPad. Social media – especially the regular sugar hit of Twitter – is certainly pervasive, but all in all, my media diet seems reasonably balanced.

]]> https://partnews.mit.edu/2017/02/14/politwoops-tracking-politicians-social-media-stumbles/ Tue, 14 Feb 2017 23:24:32 +0000 http://partnews.brownbag.me/?p=8789 Continue reading →]]> Deleting tweets is something we’ve probably all done from time to time – whether it’s just to fix a typo or to tone down our reaction to the latest aggravating news story. As private citizens, erasing an earlier post is a reasonable expectation. Yet it might be argued that for politicians in public office, what is said (and read) should stay said, much as a hot-mic gaffe, for example, can’t be taken back.

Twitter has become an important medium for politicians, whether campaigning for office or serving constituents. But sometimes, politicians (and their staffers) can get a bit carried away – and become just as susceptible as the rest of us to some post-tweet regret. Fortunately, the website Politwoops, now hosted for U.S. politicians by ProPublica, preserves these deleted tweets. Their archive makes for an interesting insight into the tweets that politicians wish they could (and perhaps believe they have) taken back. Given the Tweeter-in-Chief’s no-holds-barred nocturnal musings, for example, it’s a tool that may well prove useful for journalists in the coming years.

Several journalists have already noted, for example, the chronological coincidence that President-elect Trump praised Russia’s nonchalant response to Russian sanctions at exactly the time his recently fired National Security Adviser Mike Flynn was holding sensitive discussions with the Russian ambassador. That wasn’t a tweet Trump ever deleted – but it’s certainly reassuring to know that if he had, it would still be on record.