@janelle_rbw  May or may not be relevant: the president of CBS News is a woman— for the first time ever, which is itself absurd. I took 24 hours to think about it, and could not come up with a good reason for skipping the question.

Another impression from the CBS interview. Birx seems to me an example of a public servant caught in an intensely political position who convinced herself that to succeed she had to be as un-political as possible, as against mastering the politics, too. It could never work. But..

...politicizing her role as Task Force Coordinator— that wouldn't work either. There's no good answer, and here I admire her for taking on an impossible job. Still, she needed to realize she had *some* power. It originated in the cost of firing her and her freedom to speak after.

If you have never seen it, here's the clip of Dr. Deborah Birx trying to persuade us that Trump is an attentive student of the scientific literature on COVID-19 with a deep grasp of the data.

@ConnieRR4  @NormOrnsteinOne  thing (of many) that makes the episode absurd is that even Trump's friends and defenders would not try to persuade you that he pays close attention and masters the details. "He's a big picture guy, " they would say. And they would lionize him for NOT getting lost in the data.

"Twitter unveiled a feature Monday meant to bolster its efforts to combat misinformation and disinformation by tapping users in a fashion similar to Wikipedia to flag potentially misleading tweets." Worth a try.

In 2017, I wrote this about Dean Baquet... "If the perception of critics can edit the actions of his staff then he has surrendered power to enemies of the Times, who will always perceive bias because it is basic to their interests to do so."

A "decentralized, multi-platform network of high-performing Black and Brown media organizations" has launched: URL Media. Part of their logic: it's taking too long to diversify media companies. We can't wait around for them to change.

Another thing that stands out for me about Baron: Set your own standard and don't react to people who want you dead and also find you "biased."