Lecture delivered by veteran congressional correspondent and Johns Hopkins University Lecturer Matt Laslo at NPR’s Washington HQ on June 7, 2024 at the Public Media Journalists Association (PMJA) annual conference, "Local News, Strong Democracy.”
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FREE DOWNLOAD I:
ai resources for journalists, from Matt Laslo & The LCB
Sitter to Speaker
“Right after Speaker McCarthy became Speaker McCarthy, Hannity took over an entire room…right off the House floor. The crazy thing about it was there was, like, what, 50 or 60 chairs set up, and all these House Republicans sat in back. And I'm like, ‘Wait. You're lawmakers, you're policymakers and you're just being a prop for this TV program?’ It is a strange new world.”
— Prof. Laslo
Hannity’s House?
Sneak peek: Slide I…
“These days, I don't think the problem is hyper-partisanship. We literally have lawmakers living in two different universes,” Laslo — who wrote his MA thesis at Johns Hopkins on hyper-partisanship — tells the local news directors, reporters and producers from across the nation. “They're not disagreeing with each other. They're not talking to each other. And that's what really worries me.”
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Laslo’s lecture slides, images & tip sheets*
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Jake Tapper “was a press secretary for a Democrat. Stephanopoulos worked for Clinton. The criticisms from Republicans aren't wildly inaccurate. There's a lot of freaking Democrats who get slid into the media industrial complex, especially at the TV level.”
— Prof. Laslo
“Trust in the media kind of evaporated for at least with half the population. So yeah, I'm not very proud of what has become of this great experiment,” Laslo bluntly tells his peers. “Generative AI, think of it as a mirror, because it's literally just mining our recent past. And I think that's where we're f*****, because hanging out in the Capitol and being there in January 6 — which I'll get into — knowing that generative AI is gonna be a reflection of our society, should terrify us all.”
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“Adapt or die. The herd’s rushing to the slaughter. This is where I think you all can really stand out — enterprise pieces,” Laslo encourages the local journalists assembled in the nation’s capital. “But don't mimic us in the Washington press corps. Do the opposite of what we're doing. Like, we're terrible and a big reason that 50% of the nation doesn't trust [the media] — actually, the polls are better for us [regional outlets] — but the media industrial complex is killing America.”
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