A Baltimore-based thread to explain one singular, overriding reason why American journalism is incapable of compassing and explaining the astonishing misrule and the implosion of all our governing norms. To wit:

A few decades ago, as a police reporter covering the Baltimore department, a new...

April 08, 2026 - 16:53 UTC

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Great thread!👏👏✨
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Meanwhile, the side we’re fighting, and who’s winning, plays by the extreme opposite rules.
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Their social media platforming certainly knows no scruples. Even Fox, for all its rank dishonesty, employs the same feigned objectivity while attacking Dems and left-leaning folk for statements and actions, allowing others to characterize individuals and then quoting them.
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Many thanks. Appreciated how your first-hand account of Baltimore's cop story was a good lesson about what's missing in news coverage of Trump.
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this is like reading small pieces of an origin story for Bayliss/Pryzbylewski and I'm here for it.
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Who played this character?
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I see plots and characters from The Wire here
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And apparently you also can't name this utterly incompetent person who willingly defrauded the taxpayers of Baltimore? I guess that rather proves your point....
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1) This man in no way understood that he was "willingly defrauding" anyone. And in fact, there was no fraud involved. He thought he was deserving when he wasn't. That isn't a fraud. That's a bad hire.
2) He's dead. His family is not. So no point. I'm not an asshole.
3) But apparently Brad Deltan is.
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Well, a stone's throw to the north of ya, they seem to manage: bsky.app/profile/abbarsha.bsky.social/post/3mjd26235vk2d
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U.S. journalists are fully capable of more honest reporting. But newspaper owners (and many-tentacled media conglomerates) too often have inhibited that. Trump should have been covered as a reptile-brained would-be dictator from day one. “Political” and “access” reporting bear a lot of the blame.
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No. You missed the point like a motherfucker.

I was capable of honest reporting. Did it for 15 years in Baltimore. My owners didn't inhibit me in the manner you imagine. I reported well on the commissioner's misstatements and miscues as they occurred. Could not declare him a fool, though he was.
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Mr. Simon: I very much appreciate the thread and have nothing but praise for what was written.

What I did not see, though, was an explanation of **why** journalism should shy away from stating those obvious truths. Yes, I get that there is the line you describe, but why should it be so?
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I don't speak for him, but I was a newspaper cops beat reporter for a long time. Attribution. You can't state a general (private) consensus like that without substantial attribution of that opinion to other named people.
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Thanks in advance for any reply.
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A few years ago, a "10 out of 10 qualified journalists agree: POTUS is out of his damn gourd and unfit for office" banner above every article might have been helpful. These days, I wonder if it'd even move the needle.
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I don’t know if this was true in this particular case, but in general, if a journalist or editor was motivated to find someone to badmouth (deservedly or not) a high ranking official, they would find such a person to do it under their own name. Maybe it’s more prevalent and lopsided now than before.
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Plenty of journalists and editors found people to testify under their own name that Biden was too old and infirm, that Hilary hand something or other hidden in her emails, that she wasn’t nice enough or warm enough or too qualified or something. This was all A-list politicians in A-list newspapers.
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Reading this as a woman is infuriating. As bad as this situation is, it only applies to men. All the scrutiny and criticism that incompetent and terrible men evade is stored up, metastisized and then aimed at the few women in power like a firehose.
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It’s called Regulatory Capture & it’s inherent to Capitalism. As more & more is siphoned up to fewer & fewer, politicians, the media & institutions become ever cheaper to buy. It’s not a bug, it’s how the system inevitably works. Even Adam Smith admitted it in his book “Wealth of Nations” in 1776.
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Can your theory explain this?

bsky.app/profile/davmicrot.bsky.social/post/3miyl55bmok26
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Nothing in that addresses the paradigm I detailed. Nada.
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I think most savvy news consumers understand that outright editorializing — “Donald Trump, a known liar and rapist who looks out only for himself, addressed the nation this evening . . .” – does not belong in the news section. I think there is something else at work.
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The reason why independent journalism is flourishing is because MSM let us down. And journalists like Jim Acosta & Nobel-Prize-winning Paul Krugman are reporting well & good, even if there is opinion in their pieces. This is what's meeting the present moment. Lots more fucks as Acosta funnily said.
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But it’s shit like this that loses trust in mainstream journalism. If you don’t mind following the link. bsky.app/profile/jfallows.bsky.social/post/3mj7sgt6cdc2z
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You had me at Baltimore.

*straps in to read*
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...police commissioner was named to helm the department. This man was a genuinely nice soul, kind and gracious, who had bided his time for decades, rising slowly in rank, until it was his turn to grab the brass ring. His resume did not include much police work. In fact, the business of policing...
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...the city was decidedly not the fuel that drove his career. Instead, his long trajectory owed much to having had been the driver for a previous police commissioner who had been among the more influential leaders of the department, a man who in his time had made and ended many a subordinate's...
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A great thread, but depressing as fuck!
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Damnit.
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