Talking Points Memo

"Journalism" is many things. It's breaking news, it's analyzing the news, it's curating the news, it's aggregating the news, it's contextualizing the news, it's commentating on the news. It's reporting, it's investigating and it's debunking. Every news outlet has its own idiosyncratic approach to "doing journalism." 

What is TPM's? What have we been trying to do for the last 25 years?

If we could boil it down into one phrase, it might be "to enhance the reader's understanding of the world in which they live, specifically the political world." When we break news and we slap "exclusive" in the headline, it's not merely self-congratulatory — it's a signal that hey, here is a piece of information that will help you better understand the world and, for now, you can only find it right here. When we write a deeply reported piece about some goings-on with the Supreme Court, it is to help readers better understand the world. When Josh and Kate record the podcast, they are aiming to help listeners better understand the world.
 

This may all sound trite and obvious, but I don't think it is. Journalism at its best is a complementary and cooperative endeavor. In a perfect world you have a number of publications covering just about everything. There would be some overlap because redundancy is good in the information business — some, but not all, issues are open to various interpretations. Sometimes one outlet may miss something another picks up. But the general idea would be an industry made up of publications that are sort of all moving as one in the pursuit of a better informed and better educated population such that people could make intelligent decisions about how to go about their lives.

But for all sorts of reasons from ideology to the prevailing business environment in which we find ourselves, this is clearly not what exists. When journalism is more about making a profit or working to advance the ideology of its corporate or otherwise wealthy benefactors, then the notion of a unified industry working together falls apart. Now, breaking news is more of a business venture to attract eyeballs. Headlines are derived to drive traffic for advertisers. In fact, entire sections of news may be deemed "money-losing" and shut down altogether despite tangible benefit to communities. 

TPM is not the only organization that thinks of its business operation as supporting its journalism. But the number of outlets where this is the case is dwindling. We hope you'll support us, which means, as always, supporting good journalism.

If you are struggling to keep up with the barrage of executive orders and lawsuits; Trump's nominations and Trump's purges; if you aren't sure if Trump is even really the president or if Elon is running the show, TPM can help. 

No, we cannot stop these things from happening, but we can provide clarity and understanding. It's no secret that chaos itself is part of the Trump s really going on while the billionaires break into the Treasury Department. So clarity and understanding, while not sufficient conditions for getting through this administration with our democracy intact, are absolutely necessary.

For example, as Kate Riga illustrates in her reporting this week, there's an increasing divide between what Trump's DOJ lawyers are arguing in court and what the Trump administration is actually saying out loud. A third thing — what they are doing — remains at times murky.
 

Given congressional Republicans' professed indifference to his and Musk's power grab, the judiciary is the only institution willing and powerful enough to counter him. 
 

That makes that dividing line between what the DOJ says in court filings and what Trump's coterie fires off on social media critically important. If there's a blurring of that line, if the rhetoric of the latter becomes action unconstrained by the former, Trump has brought us to full-on crisis. 

The court order by a federal judge in Rhode Island handed down Monday may indicate which way the winds are blowing — or, at least, that the administration is too incompetent to fully comply with court orders as it takes a sledgehammer to the federal government: The judge found that the Trump administration is not abiding by his decision to block the federal funding freeze. 

In times like these, a credulous media is nothing but an asset to Trump and Co. Regurgitating what Trump and his cronies are saying about defying the judiciary without narrating  it within the context of what his attorneys are actually willing to say in court — not to mention the historic precedent — would be a disservice to readers. 
 

TPM was built to accurately communicate complexity. I'm not sure we anticipated the stakes were ever going to be quite this high, but nonetheless, the fundamentals of journalism remain the same. Unlike Trump, we're not sloppy. That's how we've survived and thrived for 25 years as a digital media outlet. We hope you'll join us for the next 25.