As you no doubt have heard in the last few days, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is in a lot of hot water over actions by his staff in closing several lanes of traffic on the George Washington Bridge this fall. My goal here is to not analyze the political fallout from this case, but rather to look at what can we learn here from the media literacy perspective:
- Different news channels tell different stories
According to liberal media criticism site Media Matters, Fox News gave not quite 15 minutes to the bridge story, CNN gave 2 hours and 22 minutes to the story, and MSNBC gave 2 hours and 37 minutes to it. - Forget the NSA; e-mails and texts can never be considered private
Don’t ever, ever write something in an e-mail that you could not stand behind if it were made public. Especially if you work in a public setting. The e-mails and text messages describing the use of lane closings on the George Washington Bridge as punishment to the mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey for not supporting Chris Christie’s gubernatorial reelection campaign were released as part of subpoenas from the New Jersey state legislature’s investigation. The story and headlines are astounding. - Stories from local media matter
This story first broke back on Friday, Sept. 13, 2013 when the Bergen County Record traffic columnist John Chichowski reported that closed tollbooths on the George Washington Bridge were causing a traffic nightmare in Fort Lee. - Get out front on political scandals
Gov. Christie started with the presumption that there was no scandal associated with the bridge lanes closure. He even mocked his critics, joking that he had been out at the tollgates, putting up the cones. When the story finally blew up on him yesterday and today, the headlines were brutal. Follow the link above for more examples.
- When you are wrong, apologize, and mean it…
As I’m writing this on Thursday morning, Gov. Christie is holding a press conference to apologize for his staff’s behavior. And he’s planning on traveling to Fort Lee to apologize to the mayor there and the city in person. We’ll have to see how this shakes out.