DL Open Thread: Saturday, June 3, 2023

If You’re Not Already Watching CNN, You Almost Certainly Won’t Watch After Reading This.  One of the best long-form pieces of journalism on, um, journalism and journalists I’ve ever read.  What ever possessed CNN’s honcho Chris Licht to illuminate the behind-the-scenes machinations there eludes me:

“How are we gonna cover Trump? That’s not something I stay up at night thinking about,” Chris Licht told me. “It’s very simple.”

It was the fall of 2022. This was the first of many on-the-record interviews that Licht had agreed to give me, and I wanted to know how CNN’s new leader planned to deal with another Donald Trump candidacy. Until recently Licht had been producing a successful late-night comedy show. Now, just a few months into his job running one of the world’s preeminent news organizations, he claimed to have a “simple” answer to the question that might very well come to define his legacy.

“The media has absolutely, I believe, learned its lesson,” Licht said.

Sensing my surprise, he grinned.

“I really do,” Licht said. “I think they know that he’s playing them—at least, the people in my organization. We’ve had discussions about this. We know that we’re getting played, so we’re gonna resist it.”

Seven months later, in Manchester, New Hampshire, I came across Licht wearing the expression of a man who had just survived a car wreck. Normally brash and self-assured, Licht was pale, his shoulders slumped. He scanned the room with anxious eyes. Spotting me, he summoned a breezy chord. “Well,” Licht said, “that wasn’t boring!”

Those are the first few paragraphs.  I know we have quite a few journalists who read DL.  Trust me, you, and everybody else, will want to read this.  I’m sure some J-school will put together a course based on this entire CNN fiasco.  Perhaps on just the Trump Town Hall alone.

Annnd, just like that, he gone, or at least floating in purgatory.  Some higher-up at WB/Discovery read the Atlantic article as well.  If you can’t access The Atlantic, this recounting from The Guardian should suffice.

The Revolt Of The Christian Home-Schoolers.

They said goodbye to Aimee outside her elementary school, watching nervously as she joined the other children streaming into a low brick building framed by the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Christina and Aaron Beall stood among many families resuming an emotional but familiar routine: the first day of full-time, in-person classes since public schools closed at the beginning of the pandemic.

But for the Bealls, that morning in late August 2021 carried a weight incomprehensible to the parents around them. Their 6-year-old daughter, wearing a sequined blue dress and a pink backpack that almost obscured her small body, hesitated as she reached the doors. Although Aaron had told her again and again how brave she was, he knew it would be years before she understood how much he meant it — understood that for her mother and father, the decision to send her to school was nothing less than a revolt.

Aaron and Christina had never attended school when they were children. Until a few days earlier, when Round Hill Elementary held a back-to-school open house, they had rarely set foot inside a school building. Both had been raised to believe that public schools were tools of a demonic social order, government “indoctrination camps” devoted to the propagation of lies and the subversion of Christian families.

At a time when home education was still a fringe phenomenon, the Bealls had grown up in the most powerful and ideologically committed faction of the modern home-schooling movement. That movement, led by deeply conservative Christians, saw home schooling as a way of life — a conscious rejection of contemporary ideas about biology, history, gender equality and the role of religion in American government.

I admit it:  I posted this article largely because perhaps my favorite bumper sticker of all time read:  “Danger! Unsocialized Home Schoolers On Board!”

Trump’s Classified Iran Document Is Apparently Lost–Likely In The Same Location As Dubya’s WMD:

Iowa Passes Bill To Prevent Investigations Of Corruption.  Which tells us all we need to know about corruption in Iowa:

Critics have cast the measure as an attempt to muzzle Sand, who is the only Democratic statewide elected official and widely discussed as a potential future gubernatorial candidate. Sand has also conducted aggressive investigations of Reynolds’ office. However, rather than a partisan or personal matter, Sand sees the legislation as coming in conjunction with a broader assault on transparency and good governance as Iowa has shifted to the right in the Trump era.

The legislation, Senate File 478, would prevent the auditor from accessing any information that could be deemed private. It also would strip the auditor’s power to issue subpoenas to government entities that are being investigated. Instead of going through the courts, those claims would go through a board of arbitration composed of two members named by the offices where records were being sought and one member appointed by the governor.

DuPont And Chemours Finally Held Accountable For Despoiling The Environment With Forever Chemicals.  Sure, it was a Friday news dump.  Which is why you should read DL every Saturday:

DuPont de Nemours Inc., Chemours Co. and DuPont spinoff Corteva Inc.agreed to pay $1.185 billion to resolve hundreds of pollution claims by cities, towns and local water agencies over “forever chemicals” that allegedly fouled waters across the US.

The companies will set up a fund to settle lawsuits claiming that per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, made by DuPont tainted drinking water and subjected consumers to higher rates of cancer, according to a statement Friday.

The statement was issued shortly before Bloomberg reported that 3M Co., the largest PFAS maker, had struck a separate, tentative settlement of at least $10 billion over water pollution claims in the same multidistrict litigation, being overseen by a federal judge in Charleston, South Carolina. That accord would be the largest PFAS pact in the US and one of the biggest mass tort deals ever.

“This is an impressive step toward righting a corporate wrong that threatened the health of all Americans,” said Scott Summy, one of the lawyers leading the consolidated PFAS litigation in federal court. “DuPont has decided to put money into water systems’ hands today rather than delaying payment for years of trial.”