Quill is the magazine of the oldest press organization in the United States, the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), which describes itself as having “roughly 6,000 members” and being “the nation’s most broad-based journalism organization.” It features a five-page story in its current issue (Summer/23) headlined “Refreshing the Pool: Right-Leaning Organizations Keep the Conservative Press Pipeline Flowing.”
The piece, touted on Quill‘s cover, is a largely uncritical and superficial look at efforts to push journalism further to the right.
It begins with Corey Walker, who “didn’t major in journalism” and only “took one journalism class” at the University of Michigan, but “got more journalism experience and training through Campus Reform and the College Fix, organizations that help students prepare for careers in conservative media.”
“Walker graduated in 2021 and is now a reporter at the Daily Caller, a conservative digital publication co-founded by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson,” the piece went on:
Although he considers himself a conservative, Walker says he has always kept his political leaning out of his stories, a practice he says was reinforced during all of his journalism training and at the Caller. Besides, he said, so many issues pushed by liberals are so wacky, they don’t need an editorial comment for news consumers to see how outlandish they are.
The piece says: “Campus Reform and the College Fix are among several organizations that help connect a pool of fresh, young journalists with right-leaning views—such as Walker—to jobs in conservative media.”
The story unquestioningly echoes the right-wing critique of corporate media:
Administrators at the organizations say the news ecosystem is too entrenched with liberal journalists working for news outlets that promote liberal ideology while underplaying, ignoring or misrepresenting conservative perspectives on stories those on the right care about.
There’s no skeptical perspective included to point out that corporate media routinely report major news topics like crime, the economy and military intervention through conservative frameworks.
Don’t Follow The Money
There is also no following the money that finances Campus Reform and the College Fix, and the other organizations involved in right-wing media training.
For example, in 2017, Inside Higher Ed (2/6/17), a website that provides “news, analysis and solutions for the entire higher education community” and has “more than 2 million monthly readers,” investigated the involvement of the family of Betsy DeVos, the Trump administration education secretary, in College Fix. It reported:
Her son sits on the board of directors of the Student Free Press Association, a non-profit group that runs the [College Fix] site…. Federal tax forms for the Student Free Press Association list five directors for 2015…. One of them is Rick DeVos, one of Betsy DeVos’s sons…. Tax documents show the DeVos family has donated money to a conservative fund that in turn has donated large sums of money to the Student Free Press Association.
This is the Donors Capital Fund, which, Inside Higher Ed continued,
gave $265,600 to the student Free Press Association in 2014. That was more than half of the $482,729 in total revenue the group disclosed that year…. “Donors Capital Fund only supports a class of public charities firmly committed to liberty,” the fund says on its website. “These charities all help strengthen American civil society by promoting private initiatives rather than government programs as the solution to the most pressing issues of the day.”
Illuminating information could have been found if Quill had looked into sources of funding for right-wing media training. But the piece by Rod Hicks, director of ethics and diversity at SPJ, instead quotes those who are in it, often making dubious assertions:
The organizations want to make sure the next generation of right-leaning journalists is prepared to enter the job market ready to compete for positions at both conservative and mainstream outlets. The training they provide stresses the basic tenets of journalism, such as accuracy, fairness and balance. Some strongly discourage students from writing commentary, at least for now.
‘Mainstream Media Failures’
What about Fox News, a leader among conservative media in dispensing misinformation? “Critics have long complained that Fox News airs false and misleading content,” the article acknowledged:
Fox declined to comment to Quill on those characterizations, but Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch admitted under oath that some network hosts gave viewers false information alleging the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
There is no elaboration on the multi-million dollar-lawsuit against Fox for serial lying.
Instead, there is a line: “It is not perplexing to Emily Jashinsky why conservatives trust Fox more than they do the mainstream press.” (Jashinsky is director of one of the conservative media training grounds, the National Journalism Center. There are internships four days a week, and “Friday is training day.”) She says:
What we study is mainstream media failures, and the bulk of those tend to be from the left, not from the right. We come from a belief that, fundamentally, the failure of the mainstream media is a failure of liberal ideology.
Quill has occasionally published critical pieces on right-wing media, such as one in 2018 headlined “Sinclair’s Mandates Threaten Independent, Local Journalism” (4/3/18) or an interview (9/15/20) with Brian Stelter on his 2020 book Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth. But the current issue of Quill offers, at best, a softball from an organization, SPJ, which says: “We build public trust in the media and greater accountability in the profession…”