This phrase says it all: "...the media’s extraordinary disconnect with everyday Americans." With California on fire for months at a time, and floods from "hundred year" storms devastating the midwest and east, some honest reporting on climate change was due. Instead the media hammers Joe Biden for wearing a Rolex watch, ignores a rapidly rebounding economy, and falls all over itself every time Trump shows his ass. Newspaper and TV editors look at their dismal reader/viewer ratings and wonder why they are shrinking.
Fourth media fail: The massive effort to portray Biden as a fool for withdrawing from Afghanistan. With few exceptions, the withdrawal was portrayed as a catastrophe for which Biden was fully to blame, despite the actual facts. On the other hand, Trump's withdrawal of thousands of troops at the end of his presidency was barely mentioned - a withdrawal that was discussed with the Taliban but not the Afghan government. The withdrawal left the doors wide open for Al Qaeda and other extremists to pour in. Yet Trump was widely quoted as the wise statesman.
Fifth media fail: The lack of coverage of the efforts by the GOP to destroy our democracy anywhere other than the opinion columns.
I hold out no hope based on the NYT's weak tea op ed "warning us of the dangers of Trump" from 1/1. Sure, it was probably the most hard-hitting the Times' ed board has produced in a while (that wasn't castigating Dems). And they do put the words Republican and authoritarian in the same sentence once (I bet there were debates about that!). But their language is way too measured for a hair-on-fire subject. They talk about our democracy being threatened but don't lay out exactly what the stakes are. And once again they assume that the GOP will win the midterms— and continue to push a Democratic midterm bloodbath (in the guise of a question) with boxed links to articles in which all but one declare the Dems will be wiped out if they don't do A,B,C,Z.
Here are two sample graphs:
"It is regular citizens who threaten election officials and other public servants, who ask, 'When can we use the guns?' and who vow to murder politicians who dare to vote their conscience. It is Republican lawmakers scrambling to make it harder for people to vote and easier to subvert their will if they do. It is Donald Trump who continues to stoke the flames of conflict with his rampant lies and limitless resentments and whose twisted version of reality still dominates one of the nation’s two major political parties.
"In short, the Republic faces an existential threat from a movement that is openly contemptuous of democracy and has shown that it is willing to use violence to achieve its ends. No self-governing society can survive such a threat by denying that it exists. Rather, survival depends on looking back and forward at the same time."
Regular citizens. A movement. Republicans "scrambling to make it harder." The Times' editors refuse to come out and say point blank that the existential threat we face is the GOP. They dance around it, take a short jab here and there, yet make it seem as if the danger is coming solely from Trump, when it is the entire GOP with the exception of Kinzinger and Cheney. (They also blame all Dems for the sins of Manchin and Sinema—a failure is a failure.)
Nowhere do they mention their own culpability in normalizing Trump, refusing to consistently call his lies lies or call for his resignation, and even now these editors pretend that there are still sensible Republicans—"Republican leaders could help by being honest with their voters and combating the extremists in their midst." The entire party has enabled Trump, pays fealty to him, and has capitulated to those extremists! Nor do the Times' editors call 1/6 what it was—a failed insurrection. Instead, it's still a riot.
Sure, I am nitpicking—at least they said something and do mention Republicans more than Democrats. But it's not enough to tell the story, it's also how the story is told. We see it with the skewered coverage—exemplified by the trio of epic fails Eric writes about today.
With a few exceptions, our media, led by the vaunted NYT, is most definitely not up to the crisis moment we are facing.
Couple of quick points. Too under the weather to elaborate so may be a couple of quick barely-coherent points.
I think we're at the point that the question should be less How did the mainstream fail society this time? and Instead Why is the mainstream regularly misreporting? Why>How and all that.
My theory, noted here often enough, is that what and how things get reported is a deliberate choice. I cannot, refuse to believe that mainstream reporters and editors are that ignorant of what they're reporting. I should say that I cannot because I've seen the occasional interview over the years where a reporter demonstrates real knowledge of their area of expertise, approximately none of it getting reflected in their reporting. Instead, one gets propaganda, BS, going through the motions of appearing as a serious journalist, whatever. It's interesting, telling that the premier or most prominent journalism award -- the Pulitzer -- is essentially rigged and little more than fiat decisions.
It's not just the political in which the media fail. Economic reporting is as bad -- like political reportage, it's a case of a few flakes of gold in a mountain of hot steaming feces (dunno in which area the media fail more) as well as national security. (The slamming/sliming of Biden on the withdrawal from Afghanistan is maybe literally insane given that the critics in the media also failed approximately 100% in their coverage of Afghanistan for over forty years. Bonus factoid: That liberal, progressive Afghanistan that the Biden critics have been crying about? Afghanistan's most liberal, modern state was in the late 1970s to which Carter responded by creating the Islamofascist mujahideen from which Al Qaida and the Taliban descended.)
As for Dems' need to be crushed in 2022: Since some crushing as a result of GOP state house's laws formalizing their vote rigging, I think some crushing both inevitable and from which there will be no recovery. That's what an existential crisis means. Which is another story the media have been failing in reporting for approximately forty years.
The main stream media's narrative is intentional. The owners of the media are fans of the super wealthy, namely right wing players who own everything. In a year when we saw an actual insurrection take place at the Capitol, think about that for a second, we did not and still do not have daily headlines calling for the heads of those in power who planned it. The evidence is more clear every day. In a year when storms and wild fires got more severe than ever, we did not see headlines clamoring for immediate climate response, reporting on the environmental precipice the world finds itself. In a year when the continuing pandemic continued to kill American citizens at an alarming rate, where were the headlines calling for the nonsensical partisan bullshit to stop and mandates to be passed. These headlines aren't there because the media owners don't want that. There goal is to put their crony Republican criminals back in power. It's better for them financially. The Fourth Estate is dead, at least the MSM. Plain and simple.
I suspect many would have expected The New York Times to make the top 3, but everybody at The Times spent the year at a diner in Ashtabula, asking old white men what they think of Kamala Harris.
And I emailed E.J. Dionne, and thanked him. He's one of the few DC pundits who has been a reporter and still reports. I append the email here because even he won't go there:
Your newest column is why I cite you as the best writer on politics in DC today.
But I am curious:
"Let’s stipulate: A media ecosystem divided between a mainstream that takes pride in nonpartisan toughness on incumbents and a powerful right-wing communications network makes life harder for Democrats. But there is little chance of changing the media narrative unless Democrats themselves shift the broader conversation."
Now, you were yourself a top political reporter before going into columns and academe (confession: I once was a very mediocre newspaper reporter and editor, later wrote a lot of columns, and am a history professor--and, dare I say, old pal of mutual friend Heather Richardson). And one of the things I realized about myself as a reporter was that I was lazy. I really didn't want to have to dig.
You were different, but that paragraph presents a problem for me. Namely, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of those assigned to report on politics in DC who actually report, as opposed to reciting horse race results. To put it another way, I sure learned a lot about what Joe Manchin was saying and doing each day, but it took a lot of digging for me to find out what actually was in the bill.
The problem is not merely the right-wing ecosystem. It is that the rest of those who cover politics in DC--and I hate to say they cover it--allow the right-wing ecosystem to affect and even drive their narrative, and they are more interested in clicks and fire than in illumination. And more of those in your position need to call them out, for the sake of democracy.
I would just like some indication these so called news organizations know how badly they screwed up. Or will they continue to write their own epitaphs?
Today’s Washington Post has an excellent article by Margaret Sullivan on it’s main webpage (although it is still listed as under the Style section!) Here are some highlights:
“If American democracy is going to survive, the media must make this crucial shift”
“For the most part, news organizations are not making democracy-under-siege a central focus of the work they present to the public.”
“ We are losing our democracy day by day, and journalists are individually aware of this, but media outlets are not centering this as the story it should be,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a scholar of autocracy..”
Insanity - doing the same thing over, over, expecting a new result. Lousy reporting invites great critics like Eric, Sullivan, Ruben to cheer us on and remind us all to keep beating the outrage drum until msm wakes up to their complicity and duplicity with the powers that be in order to maintain access, profits. Just as the maga crowd cares and knows nothing about the Constitution the press seems to care about nothing but clicks and profits.
I know our issues with the press or mainstream media would be much less if the right leaning media was slightly more fair. Specifically Fox and a lot of the radio. I get why MSNBC may grill Buttigieg on the supply chain issues or bring up inflation when talking with other officials. It's fair to bring up those points.
But then you have Fox which is just right wing, and really far right wing, propaganda. If Biden had done what Trump did in 2020 regarding Covid, I would expect the media to go after Biden. Yet we saw Fox just spread the propaganda and offer no criticisms.
And that creates our frustrations, since the right wing media is just pure propaganda at this point, the rest of media just ends up overcompensating in desperately trying to be fair.
This phrase says it all: "...the media’s extraordinary disconnect with everyday Americans." With California on fire for months at a time, and floods from "hundred year" storms devastating the midwest and east, some honest reporting on climate change was due. Instead the media hammers Joe Biden for wearing a Rolex watch, ignores a rapidly rebounding economy, and falls all over itself every time Trump shows his ass. Newspaper and TV editors look at their dismal reader/viewer ratings and wonder why they are shrinking.
I’m glad you read Politico so we don’t have to. Thank you.
Fourth media fail: The massive effort to portray Biden as a fool for withdrawing from Afghanistan. With few exceptions, the withdrawal was portrayed as a catastrophe for which Biden was fully to blame, despite the actual facts. On the other hand, Trump's withdrawal of thousands of troops at the end of his presidency was barely mentioned - a withdrawal that was discussed with the Taliban but not the Afghan government. The withdrawal left the doors wide open for Al Qaeda and other extremists to pour in. Yet Trump was widely quoted as the wise statesman.
Fifth media fail: The lack of coverage of the efforts by the GOP to destroy our democracy anywhere other than the opinion columns.
I hold out no hope based on the NYT's weak tea op ed "warning us of the dangers of Trump" from 1/1. Sure, it was probably the most hard-hitting the Times' ed board has produced in a while (that wasn't castigating Dems). And they do put the words Republican and authoritarian in the same sentence once (I bet there were debates about that!). But their language is way too measured for a hair-on-fire subject. They talk about our democracy being threatened but don't lay out exactly what the stakes are. And once again they assume that the GOP will win the midterms— and continue to push a Democratic midterm bloodbath (in the guise of a question) with boxed links to articles in which all but one declare the Dems will be wiped out if they don't do A,B,C,Z.
Here are two sample graphs:
"It is regular citizens who threaten election officials and other public servants, who ask, 'When can we use the guns?' and who vow to murder politicians who dare to vote their conscience. It is Republican lawmakers scrambling to make it harder for people to vote and easier to subvert their will if they do. It is Donald Trump who continues to stoke the flames of conflict with his rampant lies and limitless resentments and whose twisted version of reality still dominates one of the nation’s two major political parties.
"In short, the Republic faces an existential threat from a movement that is openly contemptuous of democracy and has shown that it is willing to use violence to achieve its ends. No self-governing society can survive such a threat by denying that it exists. Rather, survival depends on looking back and forward at the same time."
Regular citizens. A movement. Republicans "scrambling to make it harder." The Times' editors refuse to come out and say point blank that the existential threat we face is the GOP. They dance around it, take a short jab here and there, yet make it seem as if the danger is coming solely from Trump, when it is the entire GOP with the exception of Kinzinger and Cheney. (They also blame all Dems for the sins of Manchin and Sinema—a failure is a failure.)
Nowhere do they mention their own culpability in normalizing Trump, refusing to consistently call his lies lies or call for his resignation, and even now these editors pretend that there are still sensible Republicans—"Republican leaders could help by being honest with their voters and combating the extremists in their midst." The entire party has enabled Trump, pays fealty to him, and has capitulated to those extremists! Nor do the Times' editors call 1/6 what it was—a failed insurrection. Instead, it's still a riot.
Sure, I am nitpicking—at least they said something and do mention Republicans more than Democrats. But it's not enough to tell the story, it's also how the story is told. We see it with the skewered coverage—exemplified by the trio of epic fails Eric writes about today.
With a few exceptions, our media, led by the vaunted NYT, is most definitely not up to the crisis moment we are facing.
I sincerely hope they prove me wrong.
Couple of quick points. Too under the weather to elaborate so may be a couple of quick barely-coherent points.
I think we're at the point that the question should be less How did the mainstream fail society this time? and Instead Why is the mainstream regularly misreporting? Why>How and all that.
My theory, noted here often enough, is that what and how things get reported is a deliberate choice. I cannot, refuse to believe that mainstream reporters and editors are that ignorant of what they're reporting. I should say that I cannot because I've seen the occasional interview over the years where a reporter demonstrates real knowledge of their area of expertise, approximately none of it getting reflected in their reporting. Instead, one gets propaganda, BS, going through the motions of appearing as a serious journalist, whatever. It's interesting, telling that the premier or most prominent journalism award -- the Pulitzer -- is essentially rigged and little more than fiat decisions.
It's not just the political in which the media fail. Economic reporting is as bad -- like political reportage, it's a case of a few flakes of gold in a mountain of hot steaming feces (dunno in which area the media fail more) as well as national security. (The slamming/sliming of Biden on the withdrawal from Afghanistan is maybe literally insane given that the critics in the media also failed approximately 100% in their coverage of Afghanistan for over forty years. Bonus factoid: That liberal, progressive Afghanistan that the Biden critics have been crying about? Afghanistan's most liberal, modern state was in the late 1970s to which Carter responded by creating the Islamofascist mujahideen from which Al Qaida and the Taliban descended.)
As for Dems' need to be crushed in 2022: Since some crushing as a result of GOP state house's laws formalizing their vote rigging, I think some crushing both inevitable and from which there will be no recovery. That's what an existential crisis means. Which is another story the media have been failing in reporting for approximately forty years.
The main stream media's narrative is intentional. The owners of the media are fans of the super wealthy, namely right wing players who own everything. In a year when we saw an actual insurrection take place at the Capitol, think about that for a second, we did not and still do not have daily headlines calling for the heads of those in power who planned it. The evidence is more clear every day. In a year when storms and wild fires got more severe than ever, we did not see headlines clamoring for immediate climate response, reporting on the environmental precipice the world finds itself. In a year when the continuing pandemic continued to kill American citizens at an alarming rate, where were the headlines calling for the nonsensical partisan bullshit to stop and mandates to be passed. These headlines aren't there because the media owners don't want that. There goal is to put their crony Republican criminals back in power. It's better for them financially. The Fourth Estate is dead, at least the MSM. Plain and simple.
I suspect many would have expected The New York Times to make the top 3, but everybody at The Times spent the year at a diner in Ashtabula, asking old white men what they think of Kamala Harris.
Discovering twitter.com/dougjballoon was a highlight of my year, along with this newsletter.
And I emailed E.J. Dionne, and thanked him. He's one of the few DC pundits who has been a reporter and still reports. I append the email here because even he won't go there:
Your newest column is why I cite you as the best writer on politics in DC today.
But I am curious:
"Let’s stipulate: A media ecosystem divided between a mainstream that takes pride in nonpartisan toughness on incumbents and a powerful right-wing communications network makes life harder for Democrats. But there is little chance of changing the media narrative unless Democrats themselves shift the broader conversation."
Now, you were yourself a top political reporter before going into columns and academe (confession: I once was a very mediocre newspaper reporter and editor, later wrote a lot of columns, and am a history professor--and, dare I say, old pal of mutual friend Heather Richardson). And one of the things I realized about myself as a reporter was that I was lazy. I really didn't want to have to dig.
You were different, but that paragraph presents a problem for me. Namely, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of those assigned to report on politics in DC who actually report, as opposed to reciting horse race results. To put it another way, I sure learned a lot about what Joe Manchin was saying and doing each day, but it took a lot of digging for me to find out what actually was in the bill.
The problem is not merely the right-wing ecosystem. It is that the rest of those who cover politics in DC--and I hate to say they cover it--allow the right-wing ecosystem to affect and even drive their narrative, and they are more interested in clicks and fire than in illumination. And more of those in your position need to call them out, for the sake of democracy.
Thanks again for great work.
The New York Times treatment of all things Clinton was a major reason for me finally canceling a decades long subscription. I get your point.
I would just like some indication these so called news organizations know how badly they screwed up. Or will they continue to write their own epitaphs?
Today’s Washington Post has an excellent article by Margaret Sullivan on it’s main webpage (although it is still listed as under the Style section!) Here are some highlights:
“If American democracy is going to survive, the media must make this crucial shift”
“For the most part, news organizations are not making democracy-under-siege a central focus of the work they present to the public.”
“ We are losing our democracy day by day, and journalists are individually aware of this, but media outlets are not centering this as the story it should be,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a scholar of autocracy..”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/01/03/media-democracy-jan6-atlantic-npr/
A "friendly suggestion" to Ron DeSadist:
Don't bring your immunocompromised wife to a superspreader event.
Insanity - doing the same thing over, over, expecting a new result. Lousy reporting invites great critics like Eric, Sullivan, Ruben to cheer us on and remind us all to keep beating the outrage drum until msm wakes up to their complicity and duplicity with the powers that be in order to maintain access, profits. Just as the maga crowd cares and knows nothing about the Constitution the press seems to care about nothing but clicks and profits.
I know our issues with the press or mainstream media would be much less if the right leaning media was slightly more fair. Specifically Fox and a lot of the radio. I get why MSNBC may grill Buttigieg on the supply chain issues or bring up inflation when talking with other officials. It's fair to bring up those points.
But then you have Fox which is just right wing, and really far right wing, propaganda. If Biden had done what Trump did in 2020 regarding Covid, I would expect the media to go after Biden. Yet we saw Fox just spread the propaganda and offer no criticisms.
And that creates our frustrations, since the right wing media is just pure propaganda at this point, the rest of media just ends up overcompensating in desperately trying to be fair.
Eric - I admire that you could choose only 3 media fails for 2021. I am pretty much stumped thinking about anything the press did right in 2021.
LMAO that a buddy sent me this to start off the New Year!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXZbAE7Zbhk
Well said and right on.