Tag Archives: media

A Functional Media?

Research strongly suggests that Americans are split between an informed electorate and those delicately referred to as “low information voters” (also known as “MAGA”). As I’ve pointed out repeatedly on this blog, our current information environment reinforces misinformation and disinformation, catering to those who simply want their prejudices confirmed. The Internet has proved to be a warm and fuzzy place for those whose “research” is confined to searches for confirmation of their pre-existing biases.

That reality allows Trump to engage in fact-free bloviating–also known as lies–secure in the knowledge that a multitude of propaganda sites will obediently echo them, no matter how ridiculous or easily and repeatedly debunked.

A recent essay from the Bulwark posits that today’s media falls into roughly three categories:

There’s the state media—Fox, Newsmax, the Federalist, HughHewitt.com—which have become pure propaganda outlets.

There’s the “neutral” media—the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC News, CBS News, CNN—which believe that politics should be covered as a sport with reports about who’s up and who’s down. Extraordinary efforts are made by these institutions to present both sides of every question, even if it means presenting the case for illiberalism or platforming people who the media orgs know are lying to their audience.

Finally, there’s pro-democracy media—outlets which understand that America is experiencing an ongoing authoritarian attempt and that they must stand on the side of small-l liberalism.

The author believes that maintaining these categories is unsustainable-that the three spheres will soon “collapse into just two: Media organizations that oppose authoritarianism and media organizations that accept it.” He quoted an editorial from a technical publication–Techdirt— which recently made a surprising announcement:

Over the last few weeks, I’ve had a few people reach out about our coverage these days . . . [and about] how much we were leaning into covering “politics.”

When the very institutions that made American innovation possible are being systematically dismantled, it’s not a “political” story anymore. It’s a story about whether the environment that enabled all the other stories we cover will continue to exist. . . .

We’re going to keep covering this story because, frankly, it’s the only story that matters right now, and one that not everyone manages to see clearly. The political press may not understand what’s happening (or may be too afraid to say it out loud), but those of us who’ve spent decades studying how technology and power interact? We see it and we can’t look away.

So, here’s the bottom line: when WaPo’s opinion pages are being gutted and tech CEOs are seeking pre-approval from authoritarians, the line between “tech coverage” and “saving democracy” has basically disappeared. It’s all the same thing.

Digital illiterate that I am, I had never heard of Techdirt. But the quoted language confirms something that most political scientists know instinctively: at base, everything is politics. The people who refuse to follow the news of what government is doing, who claim that they “aren’t political,” are kidding themselves.

When the federal government stops funding cancer research, when Social Security checks fail to appear in a timely manner, when government operatives are erasing efforts to counter discrimination (or, as they currently are, reinstating discriminatory messages and behaviors)–when federal officials are telling states to handle their own fires and floods, and threatening your employees with deportation, when insane policies are threatening to tank the economy and erode your retirement–it is no longer possible to tell yourself that “politics” is irrelevant to your life.

The article suggests that tech outlets are among the first to speak out because “they have specialized knowledge—and because they don’t have relationships with people in politics to tend to.”  They are able to see clearly what is happening and willing to speak out against it.

We have seen the exact same thing with some specialized legal publications. Lawfare and JustSecurity.org were once destination sites for law nerds. Today they have become two of the most essential media organizations in America.

Why? Because since these people specialize in the law they know exactly how serious Trump’s attack on the rule of law is—and how dangerous it is.

Like Techdirt and Wired, serious people in the legal space are being radicalized—democracy pilled?—because they understand that this isn’t a game and that the liberal press does not have an obligation to present illiberalism as a point of view worthy of consideration.

The people in pro-democracy media understand that liberalism has a moral obligation to take its own side.

“Fair and Balanced” was never accurate, because “balance” by its very nature/definition cannot be accurate. And stenography–he said/she said–isn’t journalism.

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Trump’s Mental Decline

There are ten days until November 5th, millions of Americans have already cast their ballots, and finally–finally–the media has begun to focus on the fact that a major-party candidate for President is bat-shit crazy.

Do MAGA voters even care? Or does their hatred of “those people” [fill in the minority of your choice] outweigh the very real prospects of domestic autocracy and potentially, World War III? Do they even understand that Trump’s mental breakdown means they are actually voting for a JD Vance presidency?

Google “Trump’s mental breakdown” or something similar, and Google obliges with numerous hits. Even the New York Times, which has been inexplicably unwilling to hold Trump to the same standards they applied to Biden, has noted the evidence. Under the headline “Trump’s Speeches, Increasingly Angry and Rambling, Reignite the Question of Age,” the Times noted Trump’s age and the fact that

the 78-year-old former president’s speeches have grown darker, harsher, longer, angrier, less focused, more profane and increasingly fixated on the past, according to a review of his public appearances over the years.

Other outlets have been less restrained. The Boston Globe addressed the seeming reluctance to call a lunatic a lunatic:

We can see the decline in the former president’s ability to hold a train of thought, speak coherently, or demonstrate a command of the English language, to say nothing of policy. So why are Republicans and the press holding Trump to a different standard than Biden?…

President Biden, after struggling with his answers during a June debate with Trump, ended his bid for a second term in July. That decision came after Democrats publicly voiced concern about Biden’s cognitive fitness and the press pursued the controversy breathlessly for weeks. Editorial boards, including the Globe’s, had even urged Biden to step aside.

Yet neither the media nor Republicans have shown that kind of urgency as Trump has repeatedly shown himself to be, to put it kindly, unwell. That is not only unfair and irresponsible, it is dangerous for the future of our country.

Forbes —hardly a Left-wing publication–has also weighed in, noting that

In interviews and speeches that have grown progressively longer during his third White House campaign, Trump often leaps back and forth from one topic to the next, appears increasingly unhinged, and mixes up and mispronounces words.

The article went on to catalog the reasons for concluding that Trump’s senility has become too obvious to ignore. And the New Republic–which is Left of center–recently noted that efforts to normalize what is decidedly not normal have finally given way to concerns over Trump’s very obvious mental incapacities.

Newsweek has also covered Trump’s decline. The article quoted Trump’s niece and fierce critic, Mary Trump, a psychologist by training, who pointed out that her uncle is “the oldest person in American history ever to run for the presidency,” and that “he can’t pronounce words or stay on topic,” and “engages in a worrisome degree of tangential thinking.”  Huffpost ran a similar critique by an unrelated mental health expert,. who warned that Trump’s “diminishing cognitive ability can’t be ignored.”

“There’s reasonable evidence suggestive of forms of dementia,” clinical psychologist Ben Michaelis told the website. “The reduction in complexity of sentences and vocabulary does lead you to a certain picture of cognitive diminishment.”

There’s much more, but the relative recency of these articles is unnerving, because rational observers have noted his mental issues–including an inability to engage in complex thought or analysis– for far longer. Yet the same media that hounded a much more mentally-competent Joe Biden out of the race basically engaged in what has been aptly called “sane-washing.”

As a September article from Mother Jones put it:

In recent days, I came across what seems to be a new term to describe much media treatment of Donald Trump: “sane-washing.” This is similar to the more common phrase “normalization,” but it extends beyond what we’ve seen for years—the media reporting on Trump as if he is a regular politician who operates within the conventional bounds of political spin and human actions—to covering up (or sidestepping or downplaying) Trump’s apparent cognitive flaws.

Among other examples, the article cited Trump’s claim that schools are providing sex change operations to children without their parents’ consent. Direct quote: “Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much. Go have a good day in school.’ And your son comes back with a brutal operation. Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?”

What is wrong with our country is the prospect that this lunatic will get millions of votes.

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What The #*#* Is Wrong With The Media?

I generally resist characterizations of “the media.” There are literally thousands of Internet sites maintained by newspapers and magazines, specialized sources of information on everything from foreign affairs to medical conditions–in short, a massive number of sites offering “news” about pretty much everything, and doing so from a wide spectrum of perspectives.

That said, it is true that what we sometimes call “legacy media” (or, in Sarah Palen-speak, the “lamestream media”) exert a disproportionate influence over popular opinion. When it comes to political coverage, accusations of inadequacy or downright bias have been mounting–with good cause. (If you want to read a scathing–albeit accurate–description of  political coverage, click this link.)

The question, of course, is why? (Of course, that question isn’t limited to the media’s reluctance to call a lunatic a lunatic–it also extends to the question why millions of Americans actually intend to vote for a mentally-ill ignoramus, but today’s post is about the media.)

Talking Points Memo is one of the most reliable sources of political news, and a column by its editor/publisher Josh Marshall recently considered the issue. Responding to a reader who noted the almost-exclusive media focus on the horse-race rather than on policy–and the GOP’s utter lack of policy under Trump– Marshall wrote

At an important level, Harris shouldn’t want to and can’t expect to be judged by the bar set by Donald Trump, a degenerate scamp on his best days and a virulently racist wannabe dictator on his worst. But the comical disconnect between the two standards is one elite political reporters as a whole need to have some reckoning with. And beyond that, NR’s and many others’ responses to these complaints show the anger that has built up over the years over the almost total click-the-snooze-button, we-don’t-have-time attitude of most campaign reporters when it comes to discussions of policy. Sure, everyone hates the press and just finds their own reasons to do it. Sometimes the press as a group and concept does indeed become the punching bag for all of people’s gripes and grievances about how campaigns and politics generally play out. But there’s a very legitimate gripe here. And it’s the source of the intensity of a lot of the pushback on this front.

The New York Times has come in for significant criticism for what–to a rational reader–appears to be a reluctance to apply the same standards to Trump that it applies to his opponent. Before Biden withdrew, the paper focused relentlessly on every indicator of Biden’s age, while generally ignoring evidence of Trump’s (he’s only three years younger) and his manifest mental infirmities. There was particular anger when the Times fielded a poll asking responders whether Biden was too old to be President. As one angry reader wrote in his “cancel my subscription” missive: “did you ask your random voters whether Trump is too insane, doddering, racist, sexist, criminal, traitorous, hateful to be effective as President? This is not a poll. It is your agenda.”

There are numerous other examples, and I return to the question I posed earlier: why??

Some observers have speculated that the media–always a target of Trump’s enmity–is simply frightened that Trump will exact revenge if elected. Others attribute the seeming bias to the profit motive: to the extent newspapers can even the electoral odds, they sell more papers. I have difficulty believing either of these motives–the Times and Post have been courageous truth-tellers in the past. But the skewed and inadequate reporting is too obvious to ignore.

Before the 2024 campaigning began, PBS Public Editor considered a unique aspect of Trump coverage:

Never in the half-century I’ve been paying attention have the media faced a major candidate who inspired the loathing Trump provokes. I haven’t seen polls that address this—and the media have little incentive to commission them—but I can say with confidence that Trump is widely despised by the working press. For the most part, aside from an ideologically committed sliver, journalists find him dishonest, corrupt, depraved, cruel, and very likely sociopathic, and fear his re-election would be a historic calamity that could do lasting harm to core democratic institutions. 

Now, it’s reasonable to ask whether if you believe that, you can do your job as a journalist.

Is the political press simply over-compensating? Who knows?

If Faux News has taught us anything, it’s that “fair and balanced” is very different from “accurate.” 

All that said, I think we may be detecting a shift in the wake of a “Democrats in Array” Convention showcasing excellent speakers and enthusiastic delegates.

Let me know if you see it too…..

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Where “Both Sides-ism” Comes From

One of the most maddening aspects of our current information environment is the media’s constant reach for a bogus equivalency between actions and opinions that most of us see as decidedly unequivalent. Perhaps I’m indulging in false nostalgia, but I remember a time when accuracy and–to the extent possible–objectivity were the markers of good journalism. (I tend to think that all changed when Fox “News” entered the picture and equated fairness with “balance,” but the essay linked below suggests the picture is more complicated than that…)

I still agree with whoever said the journalist’s job is not to report that person A says it’s raining and person B says it’s not–it’s to look out the window and tell us who’s right.

A recent article by Rick Perlstein in the American Prospect considered this aspect of contemporary media. He contrasted what I’m calling “both-sides-ism” with the approach taken by Josh Marshall in Talking Points Memo, a site I depend upon for clear-eyed reporting. (I’m not the only one who finds TPM a valuable resource; I note that several of the other sources upon which regularly rely, including Robert Hubbell and Heather Cox Richardson, also regularly cite to TPM.)

Perlstein is writing a book

about how the last 25 years of American politics brought our democratic republic to the brink of collapse. It apportions one-third of the blame to the failings of elite political journalism. One way I make the case is by pointing to two movements that arose in the opening months of Barack Obama’s presidency, and describing how both were reported in The New York Times.

The first was covered at a volume that betokens obsession. It was called the Tea Party. The Times told its story largely in the way its leaders wished: as a spontaneous outpouring of nonpartisan anger from ordinary Middle Americans at the alleged fiscal irresponsibility of the Obama administration.

The second movement was formed from the dregs of the 1990s militia movement. It sought to recruit active-duty military and police to thwart the Obama administration’s alleged plan, as founder Stewart Rhodes described it in his original manifesto, to “go house-to-house to disarm the American people … with orders to shoot all resisters.” These were the Oath Keepers, whom the Times only ever mentioned in a single news story, in passing, busy as they were sanding down the Tea Party to fit it into the both-sides “polarization” narrative that defines mainstream American political journalism.

It was a pretty striking example of how a supposed Newspaper of Record actively renders it impossible for ordinary news consumers to form an accurate picture of what was going on in front of their noses.

Perstein contrasts that faux equivalency approach with TalkingPointsMemo.com which he says is the “actual publication of record, compiling a bountiful archive of the ways “extremism” and “mainstream” merged in the history of the Republican Party from the dawn of President George W. Bush to the present.”

The essay is lengthy, and includes both a history of TPM and theories about how we got to this point. One part of that discussion really resonated with me; Perlstein writes that the Internet created a new D.C.-based national political journalism space—the Politicos, the Axioses, The Hill, etc., all of which are funded by a subset of the national corporate lobbying budget.

You advertise in Politico, you sponsor Politico’s events, because you need to talk to the people who run the state from Washington D.C., who don’t give a fuck if you are a political obsessive in Kentucky. ‘I need to be talking to the staffers who write the legislation on Capitol Hill.’… And so your publication can’t be left, or even right, in the sense that they see it. You’ve got to be nonpartisan and centrist. Whether or not the cocky 35-year-old political reporter who’s a dick on Twitter understands where his both-sides thing comes from—that’s where it comes from.”

As Marshall is quoted in their discussion, “What we think of as the ‘both sides’ thing is an artifact of the economic structure.”

Follow the money…

Here’s the problem: functioning democracies depend upon the existence of an informed electorate. When the most reliable sources of political news try to find a “balance” between disinformation and accuracy, they aren’t just distorting reality. They are undermining democracy.

In all fairness, no reporting is, or can be, perfect. Even the best reporters can only see through their own eyes, interpret what they see through their own worldviews.

But accurate, objective journalism can tell us whether it’s raining.

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And Don’t Forget Sinclair…

Most sentient Americans who follow political news know that Fox “News” is a propaganda arm of the GOP. Fewer people are aware of Sinclair Broadcast Group, which–as Talking Poiints Memo recently reminded us–also pipes disinformation and right-wing partisan talking points through its network of “185 television stations in 86 markets affiliated with all the major broadcast networks.”


This month, Sinclair Broadcast Group has flooded a vast network of local news websites with misleading articles suggesting that President Biden is mentally unfit for office. The articles are based on specious social media posts by the Republican National Committee (RNC), which are then repackaged to resemble news reports. The thinly disguised political attacks are then syndicated to dozens of local news websites owned by Sinclair, where they are given the imprimatur of mainstream media brands, including NBC, ABC, and CBS.

Sounds bad, right? It’s quite a bit worse than that. As Judd points out, the kinds of material Sinclair has been pumping through it local stations are the most rancid of the attacks on Biden’s age and mental fitness. I’m talking about things like Biden “pooping” on stage during the D-Day commemoration, supposedly “freezing” during other public appearances (according to deceptively edited videos), and his slurring or stuttering of words.

This flood of disinformation is nonstop, it’s still often under the radar, and it’s saturating millions of American homes.

While Fox is widely recognized as a source of disinformation, Sinclair has thus far avoided becoming a household name and  identifiably untrustworthy source of information. That’s because the company lacks branding; it owns stations that are affiliated with all three major broadcast networks. When someone tunes in to Sean Hannity, they do so knowing what they’ll get; the disinformation purveyed by Sinclair is far more insidious.

A couple of years ago, the company required its commentators–news anchors on a wide variety of platforms–to read a statement bashing so-called “fake news.” That particular ploy got a fair amount of notice due to the identical language on multiple stations, but much of Sinclair’s propaganda is less obvious.

As the Washington Post reported earlier this year,

Every year, local television news stations owned by Sinclair Broadcasting conduct short surveys among viewers to help guide the year’s coverage.

A key question in each poll, according to David Smith, the company’s executive chairman: “What are you most afraid of?”

The answers are evident in Sinclair’s programming. Crime, homelessness, illegal drug use, failing schools and other societal ills have long been core elements of local TV news coverage. But on Sinclair’s growing nationwide roster of stations, the editorial focus reflects Smith’s conservative views and plays on its audience’s fears that America’s cities are falling apart, according to media observers, Smith associates, and current and former staffers who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal company matters.

As the article points out, Sinclair offers its audience “a perspective that aligns with Trump’s oft-stated opinion that America’s cities, especially those run by Democratic politicians, are dangerous and dysfunctional.”
 
“Sinclair stations deliver messages that appeal to older, White, suburban audiences, and they play up crime stories in a way that is disproportionate to their statistical presence,” said Anne Nelson, a journalist and author of “Shadow Network: Media, Money and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right.” “All of it is fearmongering and feeds into a racialized view of cities.”

I have often wondered where friends from suburbia get these incredibly distorted pictures of urban life. At root, it is clearly influenced by the fact that cities–especially their downtowns–are where “those people” live. Apparently, propaganda purveyors like Fox and Sinclair (and their rapidly growing number of clones) understand the power of prejudice and intentionally encourage the racism that motivates a disproportionate percentage of Trump voters.

A Think article written not long after the scandal of the identical “opinion” pieces suggested that Sinclair is a “truer” heir to Roger Ailes than even Fox News.

This April, a reporter for a Sinclair-owned TV station revealed that she was fired for refusing to add conservative talking-points to a climate change story. This followed weeks of controversy, including revelations that the media giant had forced local news anchors to read identical scripts denouncing, in Trump-like fashion, “fake” news.

Sinclair Broadcasting Group, the largest owner of local television stations in America, is still not a household name like, for example, Fox News. Yet it may be the truest heir to former Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes’s original vision of conservative news programming. Long before cable news, Ailes — who died in 2017 — had been dreaming up ways to inject local news programs with a conservative spin.

Here’s a list of the stations Sinclair owns.

And we wonder why Americans don’t know who or what to trust….

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