Why does the media make mistakes during breaking news coverage? According to MSNBC’s Katy Tur, who was promoting her memoir on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show on Tuesday, it is because of those conservatives who have “demonized journalists.”
Tur and host Trevor Noah were talking about how the industry balances providing viewers with new information and ensuring that information is accurate when Noah asked, “Do you ever feel pressure as a journalist to be in that space? Because you’re on MSNBC, it is 24 hours, everything is happening live. How do you—how do you-- find that balance between waiting for more information whilst also telling the people what's happening?”
The duo had also discussed Tur’s father’s role in pioneering this type of coverage during the O.J. Simpson car chase. Today, one can talk about how MSNBC gets ahead of the facts on shootings, but that’s not what Tur wanted to talk about, “I think we're learning in real time right now and I do think we are learning from our mistakes. I write about in this book the Barr summary, you know when A.G. Barr came out and he gave the summary of the Mueller Report which was, ended up being weeks before the Mueller Report came out. And so he gives us the summary on a Sunday and it is misleading as we know right now.”
This is all the fault of conservatives:
But because we were covering it live, live, live, we went to air with it and essentially became a pawn in a political document that then had a head start for the truth, in front of the truth for weeks. The problem that we face right now is that there's a part of the country that has demonized journalists and has said we only report one thing, we only want the outcome to be a certain way. So, say we didn't go up with the Barr report and other people did, Fox News did, or other outlets on the right, Breitbart, et cetera. And we didn't and we said we’re going to wait until we get the full context of it, they would’ve used that as fodder to say, hey, listen, we're not going to report on something that was good for Donald Trump.
Tur unwittingly just proved that point because the final report upended media and Democratic talking points about collusion. Yet, Tur wants to talk about Barr’s summary instead and wonders why people don’t trust her industry.
This segment was sponsored by Sleep Number.
Here is a transcript for the June 21 show:
Comedy Central The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
6/21/2022
11:36 PM ET
TREVOR NOAH: Do you ever feel pressure as a journalist to be in that space? Because you’re on MSNBC, it is 24 hours, everything is happening live. How do you—how do you-- find that balance between waiting for more information whilst also telling the people what's happening?
KATY TUR: I think we're learning in real time right now and I do think we are learning from our mistakes. I write about in this book the Barr summary, you know when A.G. Barr came out and he gave the summary of the Mueller Report—
NOAH: Yes.
TUR: -- which was, ended up being weeks before the Mueller Report came out. And so he gives us the summary on a Sunday and it is misleading as we know right now.
NOAH: Right.
TUR: It didn't have any of the underlying evidence. But because we were covering it live, live, live, we went to air with it and essentially became a pawn in a political document that then had a head start for the truth, in front of the truth for weeks. The problem that we face right now is that there's a part of the country that has demonized journalists—
NOAH: Yes.
TUR: -- and has said we only report one thing, we only want the outcome to be a certain way. So, say we didn't go up with the Barr report and other people did, Fox News did, or other outlets on the right, Breitbart, et cetera. And we didn't and we said we’re going to wait until we get the full context of it, they would’ve used that as fodder to say, hey, listen, we're not going to report on something that was good for Donald Trump.
NOAH: Right, it’s damned if you do, damned if you don't.
