This blog consistently attributes many of America’s problems to the unprecedented contours of the information environment we occupy. That critique has tended to focus on the proliferation of online partisan propaganda, but I’ve gradually become even more concerned about the reduced reliability of some of our most mainstream publications.
I previously shared concerns about an anti-Biden bias at the New York Times. The Times–like several other publications–has engaged in the sort of forced equivalency that has led them to jump on the slightest gaffe by Biden while ignoring–indeed, “cleaning up”–Trump’s ever-more-demented word-salads.
Then there’s the Washington Post, where recent shake-ups in management threaten the publication’s long-term viability–and current reliability. A recent Substack letter from Robert Hubbell analyzed the precarious situation at what was once a storied newspaper. The letter began:
On a quiet weekend, I received several emails from readers outraged over a Washington Post editorial scolding Joe Biden and his campaign for “ignoring the polls.” The editorial is titled, “Opinion: Biden should assume the polls are right, not wrong.” The editorial drips with pique provoked by Biden’s violation of the First Commandment of Serious Journalism: “We are the source of truth, and you shall not question our wisdom.” Or, as the Post editorial board put it, “Mr. Biden has attacked not just individual polls but polling writ large.”
As Hubbell noted, the piece relied heavily on a Times-Sienna poll that has been widely discredited.
What is most disturbing about the Post’s finger-wagging is that it occurs as the Post’s legitimacy as a major media outlet is open to question. A more urgent topic for the Post editorial board would have been, “Will the Post survive for another year?”
The questions about the Post’s continuing legitimacy arise because–as the publication is hemorrhaging money– its management has been taken over by alumni of Rupert Murdoch’s British media operations. Hubbell spends considerable time on the troubling backgrounds of those new managers. Then he gets to the root of the problem:
Because it is hard to be a successful media business these days. They have concluded that the profit-maximizing strategy is to “Root against Biden during the campaign and then rage against Trump if he wins.” (To understand that strategy, it is helpful to know that WaPo’s website had 100 million unique visitors in 2020 when Trump was president and 50 million unique visitors in 2023 when Biden was president.)
Is the Post surrendering journalistic ethics to garner tabloid profits?
We live in a world where one of America’s major political parties has decided to put party above country; if Hubbell is correct–and I believe he is–we are now seeing mainline news organizations put profit above professionalism.
Hubbell provides a telling example: WaPo’s recent article about Trump’s appearance at a “Black church” in Detroit.
The article peddles the popular narrative that Trump has taken his case to the Black community, where Biden is (allegedly) losing support:
Black voters have overwhelmingly favored Democrats since the civil rights movement. But recent polls show Trump has made gains with Black men, alarming some Democrats because even a small change in Black turnout or preferences could tip such pivotal states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia.
Although it sounds like Trump went to a “Black church” to deliver his message to the Black community in Detroit, the event was a PR stunt created for the media—which eagerly participated in the fraud by failing to write the true story, which is this: No one from Detroit’s Black community—or the church’s congregation—showed up to hear Trump!
The reporter clearly understood what was really going on-seventeen paragraphs into the story, he wrote that “No one in line [for the event] identified themselves to a reporter as a member of [the] church.” (He did write In the third paragraph that the audience at the event “was not predominantly Black.”) In fact–as a photo Hubbell helpfully linked to clearly showed, the audience was almost completely White.
The story that the Post’s reporter should have written was this: “Trump holds sham event in Black church with white audience to conceal lack of support among Black voters.” If Biden had pulled the same stunt, that is exactly the type of headline the Post would have run on its front page.
Hubbell concludes that the major media has lined up against Biden and is rooting for him to lose. “The prophets of doom putting profit ahead of democracy include the Washington Post and the New York Times. We just need to accept that fact and focus on getting likely voters and new voters to turn out.”
Following the money explains a very dangerous turn of events…..
What a sad turn of events for a once great paper.
Following the money cannot be separated from following the polls; we see nothing but Trump and Trump’s mind-boggling bigotry and bullying officials seated in government today, ruling from their minority positions. They are the minority but they get the most media coverage which affects all polls; they are using threats never acted on; it is a pissing contest and a my wee-wee is bigger than your wee-wee based on Trump’s “finger on his bigger red button” threat and blood in the streets if we don’t put him back in the White House…by whatever means possible.
“Sticks and stones” is their game; relying on believers that “words can never hurt me” end of that story. In the 1940s my wise math teacher in public school made two statements which are still with me today; “Empty wagons rattle the most.” and “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.” Trump’s empty threats are making the most noise and his squeaky wheels are getting the most money. They have bastardized the 1st and 2nd Amendments to get their way; using their Constitutional rights to regain control of this government with the goal of ending the Constitution for this nation. We don’t need to see poll results to know this.
Back when I was posting political observations on Facebook they had a tendency to be long, rambling, and boring, mainly because most situations are never black and white. I would get one or two likes on them and that was about it. When I passed on partisan memes I was guaranteed to get 10 or 20 times the number of likes. Today’s mainstream media is operating in the same environment. Right wing media has a tendency to get more and more extreme and even slightly left leaning media is leaning even further left or in the case of the Washington Post, vacillating between clicks and actually publishing what would’ve passed for news. There was a New York Times editorial last week stating this very effect. Almost all media is throwing out more partisan news stories.
wapo, becomes new york post. sick… that very story was written elsewhere and made the fact that few blacks were present and the main population looked more like the nationalists and nazi sect.(white only) i guess wapo could get bezo to set up a AI system to make everyone there look black. AI seems to be used recently at a media report of Romainian soccar game whereas the fans were heard chanting pro putin.. seems its was AI generated for the media release. there were no pro putin chantings. but it took two euro generated news outlets to confirm it. maybe bezos and CBS could convince putin in to a VP for trump..then they could reap what the CBS VP said back in 2017, we had a windfall in ads and revenue because of trump. selling out America for a few trinkets,ahhh the American greed machine,lubed and ready to bear fruit again… lets face it, commercial media and the times have run out of time. if the ship sinks would we notice? seems Substack has become a major news source as we went to huff years ago. now paying a few bucks to run over many stories in a few minutes to compare and read between lines all in a few minutes,heaven.. but, its costing us more to defend a goverment that is totally out of time.. so much for FREE PRESS…
We should just read JoAnns blog everymorning, the world is missing its biggest sticks from Sheilas every day news source.. and opinins..
The powers supporting Trump, i.e. fascists, are conducting a multi front war against democracy world wide. The Supreme Court, education, ethical journalism, the Justice Department, free and fair elections, and any other institutions that serve as checks on their maniacal quest for more money and power are being systematically attacked. Some people (Vernon comes to mind) saw this a long time ago. Most are only now becoming aware of the threat.
History, if we survive long enough to record it, will probably see this period as comparable to the Second World War. I think the forces of good will prevail unless climate change destroys the progress of our species. The next election will be our generations’ D-Day.
America’s number one industry is entertainment. Those who find Trump entertaining see the revenue potential of covering his activities. Biden is focused on the old-fashioned task of sustaining a nation.
It looks as if the former Graham-owned and operated WaPo that brought down the corrupt Nixon regime long ago is now long gone, having been purchased in 2013 by Jeff Bezos, who promised to remain on the sidelines, especially in editorial matters. I think he has mostly done that, although naming former WSJ editor Will Lewis as its editor certainly pushes that boundary. WSJ of course is a Murdoch publication; prior to that gig Lewis ran much of Murdoch’s UK publication enterprise. So now the conservative Murdoch is deeply involved with two of our main news sources, bringing a looser – UK – interpretation of journalistic ethics to the game. (An NPR article in June of this year outlined that history in some detail).
While I understand reporting must include trump’s activities, letting a false equivalency go unchallenged regarding Mr. Biden and trump is unforgivable. trump is not what anyone could call a normal candidate, having all those impeachments, indictments and several convictions under his belt, not to mention his declarations of revenge if elected this time around. His only hope is to be elected, bringing with it a dismissal of all federal charges, and OUR only hope is to elect Biden, allowing jurisprudence to continue in all of trump’s various court proceedings. It only seems fair at this point in time. No matter what the debates and other public appearances reveal regarding the characteristics of each candidate, the immutable fact remains that one longs for autonomy and the other democracy, and we know which is which.
The NY Times has had a problem for years. Someone there decided long ago that the biggest problem we faced was a third Clinton administration, with Hillary in the Oval Office.
Sadly, we should have seen the downward slide of WaPo, when Bezos took control. If you recall his rocket ship, it’s clear that his focus is on himself, not on good journalism. On the positive side, the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts has voted to provide $100,000. of tax money to support local news.
Indiana was going to start its newspaper when Pence was governor—called Pravda on the Prairie. To say Pence got lambasted would be an understatement, so I’m not sure what Cambridge is thinking. LOL
The NY Times is considered the paper of record for the US State Department, and the WaPo is the paper of record for the intelligence agencies. Both are US propaganda. Both have been caught censoring their journalists and using unverified sources. Moving to tabloid journalism or yellow journalism is a natural progression, and I hope they can attract eyeballs.
However, it’s not working in the UK, so I doubt it will work in the US. It works for conservative eyeballs but won’t work for the more educated liberals.
Despite all the mainstream news screaming against Nigel Farage for his truthful statement about the US/NATO provoking Russia, his Reform Party support is growing stronger. The more the Tories call him “Putin’s henchman,” his popularity grows.
If all of Europe is going further to the right, why are Americans surprised the mainstream media is pulling for Trump? There is a reason the Bilderberg Project is supporting fascists across the Western Empire.
“It May Not Be Good for America, but It’s Damn Good for CBS” ~ Les Moonves, CEO of CBS, 2016
I mean, I can’t be the only one that saw this coming?
My earlier comments noted near the end, “autonomy” rather than “autocracy,” which is what I meant to say. Apologies.
I really enjoyed the television show “The Newsroom” during its run. It depicted a once-traditionally-trustworthy news show that had fallen into the profit, clicks, and eyeballs trap, but which was now going to attempt to return to legitimacy, to provide real information to the public because they needed it. They tried, not always successfully, but they tried. And I loved that they tried.
It was entertaining, and oddly uplifting, despite the occasional terrible (and sometimes funny) failures. (It really was very funny at times. I’m reminded of a moment where an interviewee touts building an x-foot tall wall at the border, and the anchor–Will McAvoy, played by Jeff Daniels–responds with the fact a ladder could be built that was x+1 feet tall, so the interviewee retorts they could just make the wall x+2 feet tall then.)
In any case, the point is that I truly hoped that this show would be a harbinger of better days ahead. It was popular, and I thought that meant a lot of people felt similarly to me, at least about this subject. Well, here we are years later–hopes dashed. 😛
It seems from my perspective that both the NYT and the WP have slowly but surely gotten away from fact based reporting and deep into editorials, conjecture and opinion. Unreliable now, but so is our local media where “just don’t report it” is their unstated motto.
And we wonder why the population is so screwed up.
Morton – you hit the nail on the head hard – “newsertainment” . All predicted neatly so many years ago in “Amusing Ourselves to Death”. From endless selfies to endless celebrations in sports events to entertainment-designated neighborhoods….One interpretation might be that if we have given up on decency, fairness and common good, we might as well have fun….
Rupert Murdoch may turn out to be the most despicable, damaging, single person of the last 50 years, right behind Putin. His mind-fogging stench is all out everywhere in two of the Western World’s cultures.
“Profit above professionalism,” yes, but my cynical self says it’s more than that. The selective coverage of news, say Moody’s report on Biden’s and Trump’s economic agendas, barely surfaced. What’s up with that? Sheila is right and right on top of it as usual. And Heather Cox Richardson adds to it with her post today that undermines The NY Times constant refrain about corporate leaders leaning toward Trump: https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/june-23-2024?r=h05b9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Just because “follow the money” is old advice does not mean that it is not reliable advice. The risk of inadequately regulated capitalism has always been there. Nothing has changed except the size of the pile of wealth at the top end. That continues to grow and pollute our future like fossil fuel waste dumped into the atmosphere.
The fact that it pollutes something as essential to our freedom, though, multiplies its consequences a thousandfold.
The foundation of democracy is an informed electorate, and the private wealth flowing unimpeded into the public information system has the power to be our downfall. That downfall is not out in the indistinct future somewhere but months away.
The unending, unedifying age of Trump is one in which the US – no longer Madeleine Albright’s “indispensable nation”, no longer an exception – becomes in effect a normal country: self-interested, greedy, predatory, unreliable and increasingly authoritarian. If these characteristics sound familiar, they are. Trump seeks to refashion the US in his own image – and polls show he still has a big chance of succeeding. Far from making America great again, he would make it ordinary.