IT CAN'T BE THIS HARD

With a couple of communication degrees, I think of it as my job to comment on media matters. But at this point the relentless barrage of infelicity — from serious reporters and journalists at all our leading news outlets — has become pretty overwhelming. To be honest, I find it tiresome, too. But it's also hard to look away.

Aside from how I feel about all this, folks also like to tell me this “obsession” of mine is both pointless and overly pedantic. All I can offer in response is that, as ever, I'm not concerning myself with voices that don’t matter. Nor am I interested in folks who don’t know what they’re up to and are just making noise. Instead, I’m talking about the words chosen by teams of career wordsmiths. These are people, many from the Ivy League, who are thrilled to get into semantics and who’ve spent an inordinate portion of their lives agonizing over individual words and moving words and letters and sounds around to impart exactly the message they intend and in the manner they intend.

And then, deeper, these people aren’t just passionate about language. They aren't poets or English teachers but journalists and reporters. All of them tell us publicly that, as newsfolk, they’re pledged to be uncommonly honest, careful, and accurate in their outputs and place themselves to be criticized for exactly that. And when do I bring this stuff up? Just any time anyone in the mass communication game has something to offer? No, I tend to bring this up regarding events I believe are of consequence and that are not readily open to wildly differing interpretation; when, I contend, there are facts on the ground that are knowable but, while uncovered and understood, they're still being willfully misreported.

To me, that this ever happens at all at present is astonishing. And the only thing stranger than feeling one needs to point out those errors (that is to say, that the system is not so aggressively self-correcting that such things never occur or that if they do they aren't instantly admitted to and fixed) is receiving push-back when doing so. Yet, here we are.

ONE MORE TIME

Alas, another glaring example of this just arrived. It's one more instance that I believe is as easy to see as it is worth acknowledging. In this instance, as is often the case, there were people in attendance as events transpired and there were the rest of us watching live or reviewing the immediately available footage. Safe to say then that no one had less information than you or I did. So then, who can we be sure had more information than you and I? Well, obviously, those folks who spend their day consuming the outputs of other news operations and their friends and colleagues in the industry, and who have connections at all levels of government as well as the security and intelligence communities. Right: all the people at the biggest media companies. And did you catch what effectively all of them at these non-fringe news agencies offered up in response to the footage we’ve all seen of the Republican candidate delivering a speech from a lectern on a stage in Pennsylvania? I did. And I took notes and screenshots, too.

WHAT YOU SAW AND HEARD

It was early evening, 6:12pm, at a Republican political rally taking place in an open field in rural Pennsylvania. The audience was arranged on three sets of bleachers in a semicircle behind the stage the speaker is on. More attendees are spread out in much larger numbers seated in front of the speaker. Beyond them are white festival tents and large but low, steel-roofed, modern farm-style buildings and the occasional big tree.

As the speaker, Donald Trump, was in the middle of talking at the lectern at central stage, an opening volley of shots came in at him over the span of just two seconds. (To me, a Canadian who’s never touched a gun, it sounded like maybe three quick shots with sharp reverberation, making it sound like six shots.) At the very instance of the first shot, much of the audience in the central bleachers directly behind the speaker, taking up the whole backdrop of the frame of the live camera feed, are seen suddenly flinching from the sound and then looking to their right, presumably in the direction of fire. By rounds two and three, less than a second later, Trump, in centre frame, reflexively winces and clutches the side of his head, around his ear, as though he’s been hit. As the third round is coming in, his security team is heard barking “get down, get down, get down.” Trump is then seen dropping to the ground as security pounce on top of him, putting their bodies between the former president and the shooter. As quickly as anyone could discern what was taking place, those three members of the Secret Service, folks in dark blue suits with dark shades and ear pieces, pounced from out of view, up onto the stage, swarming the speaker from all sides. Simultaneous with this, most of the audience in view, directly behind the stage, is seen ducking for cover as well, following along almost exactly with the movements of Donald Trump. At the same time all of this is happening people also begin screaming. The total elapsed time for the above scene was less than three seconds.

During a pause in fire, of just two seconds, the three agents on top of Trump are quickly followed by one more. Then we hear what seems like maybe the security team's response: another volley of maybe five rapid fire shots over just another two seconds, accompanied by more yelling and louder screaming. This second set of shots could also have been the shooter emptying his clip into the crowd or something else entirely. To my untrained ear, there’s no way to tell from this video.

Then there's a pause of another ten seconds, during which time another Secret Service agent joins the team on the stage, pressing in on the huddle. At the same time, as you would expect, two more agents appear on the periphery of the stage and seem to be immediately securing an exit. As this takes place a counter-assault team also appears. Dudes in combat gear, in helmets and vests, with an abundance of ammunition strapped to their chests and sporting several weapons including assault rifles decked out in optics, lights, and lasers, also pour out from behind the scenes, securing the immediate area around the stage. Three of these guys join the secret service team on stage, each taking a different side but at a distance. Then one final shot is heard, accompanied by fewer but louder screams. From the very first shot to this last one is roughly 16 seconds.

With the security team still on top of Trump and huddling all around, we hear what appears to be the Secret Service team talking, coming over what must be the still-open mic at the lectern. Part of what is perfectly audible, though quiet, is a man exclaiming “shooter’s down, shooter’s down.” That’s repeated loudly at least five more times by different voices, at least one other man and a woman, too. Presumably this was members of the Secret Service team letting everyone in the area know the threat is confirmed to be eliminated.

Trump’s personal security team remained down on the floor of the stage with him for about a minute before they stood up. When he eventually stands he is clearly bleeding from the right side of his head, seemingly from his ear, which is congruent with his actions prior to dropping to the ground. The security team are still surrounding him on all sides as they slowly usher him off the stage and into a waiting armoured vehicle over the following minute. Total elapsed time from first shot to his entering the car was almost exactly two minutes.

THEN CAME THE REPORTS

The above describes the only footage any of us who weren’t there had access to and what was being looped over and over on all the news channels. If you’ve seen any video from the event, this or parts of it are, doubtless, the video you’ve seen. Of course, being a Trump rally, not only was the event aired live but many reporters and photojournalists from all the big media outlets were present, documenting every second of what took place. And, with that, just two minutes from the initial shot, everyone was fully aware of what transpired: an unmistakable assassination attempt. At least the first volley of shots seem, unquestionably to me, to have been directed at, and actually hit, one clear target.

So what did the first reports look like from many of those leading news organizations?

ABC: “Donald Trump escorted off stage by Secret Service during rally after loud noises ring out in crowd.”

Associated Press: “Donald Trump Has Been Escorted Off The Stage During A Rally After Loud Noises Ring Out In The Crowd.”

CNN: “Trump speech interrupted by Secret Service.” A full half an hour after the event they updated their coverage with: “Secret Service Rushes Trump Off Stage After He Falls at Rally.” From there they went with a video titled “Trump injured in incident at Pennsylvania rally.”

MSNBC: “Secret Service: Donald Trump safe after popping sounds heard at rally.”

New York Times: “Trump rushed off stage after chaos at the rally.” The report notes Trump had blood on his head and was rushed from the stage by the Secret Service after a series of “loud pops.”

USA Today: “Trump removed from stage by Secret Service after loud noises startles former president, crowd.”

The Washington Post: “Trump taken away after loud noises at rally.” Twenty minutes later they updated this to: “Crowd cheers as Trump moved offstage,” explaining further, “Donald Trump appeared to touch his ear, then duck after the loud noises. He left the sight line of the camera as the crowd became visibly panicked. Later, Trump could be seen standing onstage with security personnel surrounding him. The crowd cheered as security personnel moved with Trump offstage. Trump pumped his fist as he was being escorted away.” A Washington Post national political reporter, Isaac Arnsdorf, who was at the event, recounted the video we’ve all seen and his experience to fellow WP reporter, Martine Powers, later that evening. Arnsdorf:

So, he reaches for his ear. It almost looks like he’s, like, swatting a fly. And then he seems to realize what’s actually going on and he kinda hunches, and, and, starts to crouch down. And at that point the Secret Service (there are usually Secret Service agents who are stationed right around him) and they all rush to kind of get— to surround him and get on top of him.

INTERPRETATION?

The trouble with the above headlines, of course, is that they are either completely absurd or simply did not take place. To me at least, that’s a little weird.

The Associated Press offered to the world that Trump was “escorted off stage” after “loud noises.” It's not just that this doesn't describe what we all saw and heard, that would be bad enough, but it isn't what their own people on the ground understood the situation to be or described, either. Doesn't that seem odd? Seasoned reporter, Julie Carr Smyth, and photojournalist, Evan Vucci, were at the scene. They describe the pertinent events as I just did and add essential details, too. Carr Smyth reported, as immediately as practicable, in a clip to social media not that there were “loud noises” but specifically “gunfire.” She also explained that the results of the gunfire were Trump “dropped on the stage,” two others in the audience were struck by bullets, and the entire scene was evacuated by the Secret Service. This reporter's version of events came out on her own channels minutes after the relevant events and right outside the security perimeter and, curiously, was nothing like the headline suggests: that the speaker of the event was ushered away due to an acoustic disturbance.

Similarly, the photojournalist, Evan Vucci, whose images you’ve probably seen, reported later that evening that he was directly in front of the stage and heard “several pops,” to which he adds, “and I knew immediately it was gunfire.” He also tells us that Trump could be seen with “blood coming down his face.” Trump's bloody ear and face are, of course, clearly visible in many of the photos the photojournalist captured. So why would we suspect that when Vucci called his people at AP in the immediate aftermath of this event that his report would have been wildly different to this or that they didn't get his photos? Who else was home office getting information from? What contrary information were AP editors and news directors getting and then prioritizing that effectively contradicts their own people who were there at the scene? They had the above live feed of events as they happened and they watched the recording. Doubtless. They also had the addition of no less than two eyewitnesses and probably a hundred images that none of us saw until later. Think about it, if you wanted to be maximally vague while still being accurate, “Shots fired, people struck at Trump rally” is infinitely more so than their offering and entirely irrefutable. In light of these facts they still gave us something to the effect of “Trump leaves rally prematurely due to noise.” They had all kinds of options to play with in terms of language, none of which would be false or misleading. Alternatively, they could have said nothing. There's no legal requirement for any media outlet to report on something they're unclear about. Just wait (30 seconds or three minutes) until you have more information. Obviously.

CNN for some reason, and rather astonishingly, went a little further and wanted you to think Trump was interrupted by his security detail after having taken a fall. Now, I've watched Joe Biden fall many times, up and down the stars to Air Force One, on stage, while cycling... And I've seen him trip and nearly fall more times than that. And I'm not even paying attention. None of those times did the Secret Service pounce or the attendant crowd respond anything like they did in this situation. And the moment before his dropping to the ground, Biden also didn't motion like he'd taken or nearly taken a bullet (or had a heart attack or was blinded by the sun...) And there was no sound of gunfire (or "popping"), either. On just so many dimensions this situation with Trump looked nothing like those Biden instances, all of which were reported by these same news outlets. Worse, neither of those things, Trump being interrupted by his security team nor him falling, actually happened; and there’s no unique camera angle or whimsical version of events that would leave you with either belief. We can be certain, certain tomorrow these will not be the headlines.

Yes, CNN's headline was all fiction, just like the New York Times offering that Trump was rushed off stage after “chaos.” Whatever may have been unclear in the immediate minutes and hours that followed the assassination attempt, what was crystal clear was that Trump, and the crowd behind him, had just received incoming rounds from a gun barrel pointed in his direction. Did we know the calibre or from where the shots came? No. Did we know who fired the gun or who took out the gunman? No. But we all saw as his entire Secret Service team and all present security personnel reacted in a manner that they all believed the man's life was directly under threat. If nothing else, we all heard that same team speak the words “shooter’s down” many times, which seems pretty unambiguous even to an idiot like myself. So am I playing some silly semantic game here? Am I mixing the literal with the figurative? Am I imposing my weird perspective and beliefs and desires on the situation? I don't think so.

Too, I would love to know how it's possible that, in a country with more guns than people (where, for example, in Chicago the prior weekend alone there were more than 100 shootings), reporters, journalists, and the mysterious folks writing headlines for news companies seem not to know what gunfire, in any form, sounds like? And even if they are so unaccustomed, why are they incapable of offering up that at the event there was "what sounded like gunfire" or "what security appeared to treat as gunshots" or "what one eyewitness said was definitely shots from a gun" or anything of this sort? Even if they're all ignorant about guns and unable to write (both pretty wild limitations for senior news teams in major American cities) how can it be that all of them combined know not one ballistics expert or retired cop or military veteran or anyone who's been down range of a bullet just one time that they could run the video by? "Former police chief suspects rifle fire." How hard is this?

The Washington Post reporting was just as curious as all the above. “Trump appeared to touch his ear, then duck after the loud noises.” If the video appears to show anything it appears to show an assassination attempt and the candidate and former president nearly being shot in the temple. Even worse, Arnsdorf, a WP political reporter, offered the same, but instead many hours after the event. “[Trump] reaches for his ear. It almost looks like he’s, like, swatting a fly. And then he seems to realize what’s actually going on and he kinda hunches, and, and, starts to crouch down.” Right. Only, that’s not what happened. Objectively so. He didn’t “appear to touch his ear” nor did he look like he was swatting a fly. Watch the video again. His arm and shoulder flinches almost exactly in sync with the crack of gunfire. And he reaches up, with more rounds coming in, appearing to respond in exactly the reflexive manner you would expect if he had just been struck in the head. Even without the clear audio of gunfire, which we all had, you don’t see anything at all like what anyone thinks of as the gestures of a person swatting away a pesky fly that's bothering them. “Stung by a bee” perhaps, but notice how different those gestures are in your imagination. And then appreciate that no one who had these visuals only saw Trump: they also saw the crowd and security react dramatically. More than that, no one was without the attendant acoustics of what the earlier mentioned AP photojournalist and reporter said was unmistakable gunfire. And we all heard the crowd responding with blood-curdling screams. So no. None of that was due to a fly or appeared like someone making the motion of "swatting a fly."

From there, there’s no version of events in which Trump started to duck or hunch or crouch. That too did not happen. Those words have meanings and those behaviours were not present. He didn’t tilt or thrust his head down, lean or bend over, or go into a squatting position or partially lower himself (or enter into downward facing dog or do a pencil roll.) And he certainly didn’t just “start” to do any of that before his agents arrived. There was about one second between a rifle round clipping the former president in the ear, his team yelling for him to drop to the floor of the stage, and him being on the ground, jumped on by three men and a woman who are laid out on top and all around him. He drops exactly as fast as a senior citizen of his size and shape could conceivably drop without someone having kicked his legs out from under him. Just loop the video a few times and then you yourself attempt to go from standing to as low to the ground as you can, and on a hard surface, any faster than he demonstrated.

And even in the aftermath of this one event, even after taking in all this media, we're left to wonder why anyone (almost everyone, seemingly) wished to leave the sounds, the actions of security, and the cause of the blood on Trump's face entirely unstated or otherwise open to wild interpretation. No, it doesn't make sense. I can't explain it. When any number of other more accurate and informative statements were available?

And then when you look and find, for example, that Arnsdorf is a Yale grad, and someone who recently published a book, his first, titled: Finish What We Started: The MAGA Movement's Ground War to End Democracy, you start to wonder how innocent the errors and omissions can possibly be and why certain voices would ever be offered up as honest, unvarnished accounting. That also doesn't make sense, either. In fact, it just seems very much like we aren't trying to make sense — like, at all. And yet sensemaking just can't be this hard.

If all of the above was one paper’s reporting error or a single junior reporter being overly cautious or fumbling the ball entirely I would not have even noticed. But when you see that it’s virtually all the headlines from every outlet we’re encouraged to trust and respect (as the rare few belonging to a tiny cohort offering only the goods), well, it seems attention-worthy. Why were they, apparently, unwilling to confirm so little as there having been a shooting, of which there was no doubt? To me, getting words like this wrong and framing things in such a loose and misleading way is neither cautious nor something minor but instead grievous. And I don't really understand how folks don't have a serious problem with this stuff. To me it's like hearing a surgeon mixing up arterial with venous or a visual artist confusing hues of green with purple. Those differences, though apparently "semantic" or "subjective" to some, are as glaring as they are meaningful. In fact, so many can be seen as opposites, can't they?

At the very least, these discrepancies, as irrelevant as you may wish them to be, feel to me like stark signals that something is not right. Is there any doubt that in the wrong moment such "minor" things can actually yield tremendous consequences? Imagine Trump had taken the bullet not as he did, grazing his ear, but like the fire chief. Suddenly every word delivered and published on the matter has the potential to spark further catastrophe or, alternatively, to help quell a volatile situation. And in that moment both news people and media outlets getting things right, scrupulously and reliably, and thus all of us having somewhere or someone to go to get good information is incalculably important. But, today, right now, to whom would you look? I honestly don't know. The amount of time and work I have to put in to discern even just the basic facts about a real world event, one caught on camera from every angle, is nothing short of ridiculous. And I'm at the point where I never hear or read a report of anything anymore without insisting on viewing all the available raw footage I can with my own eyes. There's simply no person at The New York Times or CBC that can be trusted with that job. Maybe that's a good thing. But, to be honest, it feels pretty pathetic. Again, it just cannot be this hard.

UPDATE: July 17th, 2024

I've taken down some links and added a set of screen captures because many of the above links don't lead to the original articles or footage. The link to an ABC article from the day, for example, titled “Donald Trump escorted off stage by Secret Service during rally after loud noises ring out in crowd” looks as it did when I found it but now contains an entirely different video, one from the Republican National Convention. To me, the erasure of this stuff, with no acknowledgement it ever existed, is stranger than it showing up in the first place and, frankly, given the source, seems unethical.