“They disappointed climate change activists who thought they could keep President Trump from leaving the landmark Paris accord.”
Maggie Haberman and Katie Rogers, The New York Times
On July 28, 2018, the New York Times published Still Standing, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump Step Back in the Spotlight by Maggie Haberman and Katie Rogers. Maggie Haberman is a White House Correspondent who joined The Times Staff in 2015. According to the New York Times, she is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for her work on a team that reported on Donald Trump’s advisors and their ties to Russia. Katie Rogers is also a White House Correspondent who focuses her work on features and breaking news during the Trump Administration. Together, both Haberman and Rogers are legitimate sources, and this can be tested by looking at PIE: proximity, independence, and expertise. Both Haberman and Rogers have high proximity to the subject matter because they specialize in White House reporting, medium independence as full time staff writers for The Times, and high expertise because of the dozens of White House articles they wrote before this one was published. The reason I am saying they have medium independence is because of the ideology of the New York Times. According to AllSides, the New York Tines is a slightly left leaning news source, and thus their coverage is slightly biased towards a liberal audience. Therefore, this impedes upon the independence of the writers, such as Haberman and Rogers, and the topics they right about.
There are multiple motivations for writing the article. First of all, The Times wants to generate revenue, and pumping out more articles geared towards their majority liberal audience helps maintain readership. Secondly, this article is timely, written only a week after Ivanka Trump decided to shut down her fashion brand. Haberman and Rogers likely wrote their article in response to Ivanka’s decision to shut down her brand, evaluating how Ivanka and Jared Kushner’s reputation and priorities have changed since Donald Trump was elected. Third of all, and perhaps most importantly, this article effectively communicates and informs people about Ivanka and Jared’s reputations since being in the White House. Haberman and Rogers quote Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, and multiple more credible sources that have high proximity and expertise. The combination of quotes from credible sources on both sides of the aisle and detailed analysis of the quotes create strong evidence for Haberman and Roger’s argument.
Although this article is logical and fairly simple to follow and understand, I believe that Haberman and Rogers could have made it shorter. In my opinion, the article tends to drag on, with quotes and stories that are not necessary to communicate the writers’ central argument. Although this meant that nothing was left out, it made it difficult for readers to stay involved. For instance, the quote by Hilary Rosen, the Democratic strategist, does not seem like it must be included. It is known that Ivanka and Jared have critics, so spending a paragraph describing Rosen’s distaste toward the Trump family is unnecessary. Because an average article is about 650 words, and this article is close to 2,500 words, it is unlikely readers will make it through the entire thing. As a journalistic writer, it is important to consolidate and package information in a way that is easy for the reader to consume, and I think that Haberman and Rogers could have improved upon this.
To conclude, by using the SMELL test as a tool for vetting information and news, I was able to analyze the validity of Haberman and Roger’s article. Establishing credibility is the ultimate goal of any news writer and source, and tools like the SMELL test serve as a simple way for people, whether they are journalists themselves or not, to analyze the validity of their news. Overall, I believe the article articulately informs readers about the priorities and reputation of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, utilizing evidence from sources on both sides of the aisle. However, I think the article could have been consolidated because its length impedes upon readers’ ability to follow and understand the primary points. As I described earlier, The Times is a slightly left leaning source, so although the primary audience of liberal readers will likely respond well to the article, right leaning readers will likely not. This is because the article tends to critique the Trumps, starting with the first sentence of the article: “They [Ivanka and Jared] disappointed climate change activists who thought they could keep President Trump from leaving the landmark Paris accord.” Haberman and Rogers continue to use language such as “they enraged” “and alienated” and “regularly faced news stories about their unpopularity” which demonstrates their own lean throughout the article. Thus, a right leaning reader would probably not agree with Haberman and Rogers and dislike the language used to describe Ivanka and Jared.
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