The corporate media's bias against democrats has been blatant for a long time. Go back and look at their coverage of the too intellectual Al Gore, who had the audacity to sigh during a debate, or the incessant overblown coverage of Hillary's emails. They've been doing it without consequence for so long that it was easy to ramp up to a standing level of disrespect, vilification, distortion and outright contempt for Biden. The media is to blame for the downplaying of climate change, the disastrous war in Iraq, income inequality and on and on. All of it. Of course our elected officials are responsible but they wouldn't have been in positions of power without the active support of big media.
I really believe the underlying bias of our mainstream “liberal” media is subconscious sexism. There is research that shows people subconsciously think the Democrats are the “Mommy Party”, representing traditionally feminine values; Republicans are the “Strong Father” family and represent strength, toughness, power, etc.
I will never forget now the media was so obviously impressed by the tough guy macho swagger of Bush and Cheney when in reality they were both chickenhawks who did everything they could to avoid serving in a war they supported. Yet the media downplayed the draft avoidance of both men. In contrast they had previously crucified Bill Clinton as a draft dodger because he has take deferments (like Cheney) but eventually left his name in the draft and only avoided being called up by getting a high number in the lottery. And unlike the warmongering, draft-avoiding Bush and Cheney, Clinton was a very vocal opponent of the Vietnam War. (A war both Kerry and Gore served in.)
And then there was the fact the media gave Bush, who failed to complete his National Guard Service, a pass for trashing Kerry’s very real war heroism. The people behind the Swift Boaters’ slander were big Bush donors so there is no way Bush and Rove didn’t know what they were doing. By that time the media knew that Poppy Bush had personally approved the racist Willie Horton ad then lied by claiming he had had nothing to do with the independent group running it. They also knew Lee Atwater was the guy who had engineered the Willie Horton ad and the Karl Rove had been Atwater’s understudy.
The only Democrat in my lifetime that the media treated with the kind of respect they gave to Reagan and both Bushes was the glamorous playboy JFK. Carter and his people got the rube treatment and he was frequently described as a peanut farmer which was clearly not meant as a compliment. Both Clinton’s were treated as hillbilly con artists, even before the Monica insanity. (Given the media’s ongoing admiration for the very promiscuous JFK their outrage over Clinton was clear evidence of a double standard IMO). There has been more media outrage over than there ever was over Republicans holding multiple investigation of the insane, vicious and deeply cruel slander that the Clintons had murdered their close friend Vince Foster.
While agreeing with much of this, I have to correct this on one point. Clinton got a brief deferment from an order to report for duty because he promised Colonel Eugene Holmes he would join the ROTC. Clinton didn't, and indeed he told Holmes in a letter [1] that he did this to protect his future political viability. It was a very slippery move, legal but not particularly honorable.
Both Clintons had a problem with lawyering the truth, of not being fully forthcoming. "I did not have sex with that woman" was an example of trying to mislead by using the word "sex" to mean "intercourse."
It's not that the media are too hard on Democrats. It's that they simply refuse to be as hard on Republicans. A gunner in Poppy Bush's squadron claims that Bush abandoned the aircraft before his crew had a chance to get off [2]. It never got anywhere near the coverage that Colonel Holmes got, even though if (and, let's be clear, the claim is uncorroborated) the gunner's claim is true, Bush's action would have been far more dishonorable than Clinton's.
The economic reporting was actually *worse* than Dan makes out.
For example, were gas prices actually higher than usual? The Federal Reserve says no.
" Gas prices fluctuate dramatically, and gas prices have increased substantially since the 1990s, peaking in mid 2022...Adjusting for consumer price inflation... the real gas price has not been trending up and the 2022 peak in the first graph is surpassed on several occasions. [1]
Or this. Republican propaganda claims that Democrats providing income support to people suffering from the pandemic was responsible for inflation, the major component of which is housing. But they do not actually believe this. Texas Republican governor Gov. Greg Abbot says "This “corporate large-scale buying of residential homes seems to be distorting the market and making it harder for the average Texan to purchase a home,”" [2] The same sort of oligopoly exists in home builders, and has contributed to the slow pace of construction [3]. I can't tell you how many media reports I read about inflation that failed to point out that a major component of inflation was the weakness of anti-trust law.
Media almost never pointed out the obvious lies in reporting on Trump claims. The high cost of eggs driven by avian flu [4]. The fact that bacon prices have been flat in inflation-corrected terms [5]
Yes, these facts came out in little blips and drips. But they never attained narrative status. Plainly, reporters and editors are either too stupid and lazy to research their stories or the people who run the media don't want their readers/viewers to know what is actually going on. And they certainly aren't listening to readers who do know and try to tell them, because Lord knows I have tried.
To be fair, a lot of people wanted a scapegoat because it was easier than to do their part as citizens: to treat all major media skeptically, learn the basic facts for themselves, and talk to their neighbors.
I remember back when we wondered about how the Soviet people could be so blind as to believe the propaganda put out by the state. We have a country where the facts can still be found, and yet tens of millions of people believe lies that are easily debunked--many of the lies defying basic common sense (my favorite: Democrats are cheating in elections but Republicans, despite controlling most of the states, Congress in 2017-18, and the presidency 2017-2020 were unable to find and prosecute them; when Democrats controlled the White House, Republicans won.) The mind boggles at how stupid you have to be to believe these lies.
Old Joe Biden Effing Everything Up is an easy narrative to sell to a people who to a disturbing degree despise expertise, prefer entertainment to truth, and have forgotten that we are all in this together... reality will spare none of us when the problems we have neglected due to this right-wing food fight cause the next economic collapse or the implosion of American power.
Also the high gas prices were caused in large part by Putin invading Ukraine and at one point the Saudis cutting back on production. I was furious that the news article (in the WaPo I think) about the announcement that gas prices had dropped sharply and were at near-normal levels was buried on back pages with small headlines but the front page but the front page had a prominent article about the high price of eggs. And the implication that Biden was responsible for inflation that was world wide, accomplished by obsessing over US inflation while ignoring inflation everywhere else was deeply dishonest.
This is the same media that obsessed over the national debt in the 90s, constantly reporting on the debt clock of doom, then refused to acknowledge that Clinton and the Dems balanced the budget and had a surplus that they were using to pay down the debt that the media — and Republicans — claimed to be so worried about. Then when Bush ran he explicitly claiming the surplus was proof taxes were too high and that he would destroy it with tax cuts. In contrast Gore repeatedly advocated continuing to use the surplus to pay down the debt. Instead of slamming Bush the media decided that what mattered wasn’t the debt but that Bush would be “more fun to have a beer with”.
I turned off MSNBC at 8:30 pm (CT) and cancelled my subscription to HULU Live. I got into my car Wednesday morning and NPR automatically was on. I listened for 30 seconds and then turn it off. Yesterday I peeked at the headlines on both my MSNBC and NPR apps and in response to what I saw, deleted them. (PBS Newshour survives...so far). Going forward I will read only the handful of journalists and historians I follow here on Substack, like you Dan. Thank you, for your straightforwardness. It's much appreciated.
off top of head-- Oliver Willis, Hamilton Nolan, Eric Topol (translational medicine), Sherrilyn Ifill doesn't post often but her piece was the most compelling I read Wednesday morning, Jarad Yates Sexton, Sarah Kendzior
As a retired print reporter/editor from a metro daily, I’d like to take issue with your take, but I can’t. My former colleagues (particularly editors who knew better) are guilty as charged. Objectivity was not the goal. It was instead “balance” taken to a perverse extreme. Industry wide. Balance that concealed truth.
I actually agree with Dean Baker that the media has a strong bias for conservative economics which is why they refuse to give Biden credit for making our economy what the Economist recently called “the envy of the world”. Baker calls it “media macro”.
I agree 100%. Four decades ago, newspapers decided that economic reporting and explaining how things worked was important. That focus evaporated in this century, leaving at least one generation and probably two without even a basic understanding about how the US economy functions. Americans are woefully ignorant of how the pieces of the puzzle work. Instead of honest explanations of who things were working and what a Trump’s policies would do, reporting on the economy focused on the doom and gloom it meant for Biden’s, then Harris’, election prospects.
For the Biden administration to have kept inflation from rising would have taken near-Stalin levels of intervention--the sorts of policies that would have been denounced as harming the free market.
One Washington Post columnist wrote that Trump won because Americans hate inflation more than job losses. If Trump manages to execute his tariff and deportation plans, they’ll have both.
As long as news sources are owned by billionaires, the truth will be something that you will need to dig up yourself. (Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Rupert Murdoch, Patrick Soon-Shiong are 4 who have remade their tools into pure propaganda machines) X should go away, The Washington Post , New York Posts, and LA Times, need to be independent or they will wither and die.
Oddly, newspapers have been owned by rich, white men for more than a century. The difference is how those owners view the world, their place in it and whether they have the power to push back against a demagogue. Forty, 50 years ago and before, they did have that power. In the post-Reagan era, Republicans decided they lost because of what they contend was media bias, taking no responsibility for their losing ideas and policies or defending them with lies. In the present, traditional media’s influence has waned and while the influence of podcasts and websites has risen, it’s nowhere near the king-making levels of 19th and 20th centuries. The diffusive nature of media today serves mis- and disinformation quite well. John Locke’s ideal of a free marketplace of ideas has been turned into an open sewer.
Republicans made a concerted effort to intimidate the media, even before Reagan Spiro Agnew used a lot of the same attacks, even the same wording, as Trump made. There was also a wealthy right wing man (can’t remember his name) who bought enough shares of the NYTimes that he got a seat on the board. He was so disruptive that he was given private meetings with the top brass to get him out of the board meetings. This was decades ago.
Mark Hertsgaard wrote in his excellent book “On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency” that two of Reagan’s top aides, David Gergen and Richard Darman admitted that Reagan’s Teflon was mainky due not to Reagan’s personality, but to the media holding back criticism. They ascribed this not just to reporters but to their bosses. For example tough coverage of Reagan’s economic policies or of the brutal regime in El Salvador that Reagan supported was reigned in by media bosses.
During the Raygun years, INS went after a church in Tucson that was giving immigrants sanctuary.
Spiro called the press plenty of names, but his corruption got him in the end. Nixon got away with more than Watergate, with Kissinger’s help.
If Americans want to know why so many people from Central America are coming here, they need look no further than US foreign policy, especially in the 1980s.
Agreed - Day after election I wrote: After canvassing and talking with folks outside of my own bubble my thoughts are (IMHO, YMMV): The racists gonna racist; sexists gonna sexist. At least in what was expressed to me it wasn't even the anti-Trans fear-mongering. The SWING vote Trump losing popular vote to Clinton and Biden but winning it against Harris) was mostly due to false media narrative on economy. It would have been nice if non-Fox mainstream media had gone with honest factual reporting of who and what Trump and Repuglicans actually are day-in-day-out instead predigested even-hand/ both-sadism and sane-washing. And also if there was truthful reporting, hammering on the actual economic improvement since 2022, every day for past 2 years. Over past 3 years actual jobs way up, actual crime way down; over past 2 years actual inflation down... talking to folks in small towns PA... SWING voters (my canvassing lists were folks who have voted Dem at least at some point in recent past; but mostly infrequent, intermittent, lower-information voters) thought the opposite and blamed Dems. At least in my conversations, LGBT did not come up. Immigration contextualized with jobs. On the single issue by single issue we win... Abortion protections won majority votes (remember Florida was actually 57% for protection), paid leave won. Same swing voters who voted for those, even down-ballot for House, then voted Trump on false narrative mostly on economy. Dems, especially the left-progressive wing, objectively better on economy in general. Dems getting blamed unilaterally for NAFTA is another example of media supporting false narrative. And the success of the immigrant fearmongering in expanding the xenophobic reaction is also tied to crap media narrative on actual economy, and silencing of progressive Dems better solutions."
The only way I can describe it is abject apathy on the part MSM. And now they will spend months and months navel gazing trying to convince their readers who haven’t jumped ship that they don’t know how they missed the mood in America and couldn’t deliver the coverage and analysis Americans needed to avert what people should consider a shocking and devastating electoral outcome. I’m numb, TBH.
Agree. This is the legacy of decades of deregulation; lack of advocacy on media policy esp digital ( inc privacy which reflects the commercial surveillance biz model that dominates all digital media); related failure to develop governance proposals for diversity of ownership and content, inc for platforms. Reforming US digital media must be on agenda for democratic renewal, esp as AI, data practices, omnichannel behaviors, further consolidation and alignment fosters more powerful and less accountable media environment. Jeff Chester, Center for Digital Democracy.
And we can now look forward to four years of normalization and sanewashing Trump, four years of excuses for MAGA overreach, four years of magnifying any small Democratic misstep, and four years whining and complaining about obstructionist Democrats when they push back on some MAGA outrage. The elite media is full of itself, and totally full of shit. And I for one will shed no tears when Trump orders the NYT and the WaPo shutdown as subversive outlets.
The sad part is that WaPo and NYT are arguably the most liberal parts of the MSM. But WaPo has been deep in the red for years, and it's just Bezos's vanity that hasn't seen it shuttered. Or worse, sold (like WSJ) to Murdoch.
As someone who spent close to 30 years in mainstream journalism in radio, print, and online, I think the OP is closer to the truth than you are. A lot closer. And what, exactly, did you mean by "Off to the jungles of Africa with you"? Because my first guess is extremely unflattering to you.
And what are the odds that the press does nothing when Trump takes credit for the effects of the Biden economic recovery, effects of the IRA, etc., as he did when he inherited Obama's economy? No push-back then, likely none coming this time. Frankly, though, I suspect that even if you provided every Trump voter with an easy-to-follow collection of misinformation/disinformation rebuttals, they still would stick with what they hear on FAUX "News" and their like iterations. And, of course my post will cause me to be doxxed as an out of touch elitist, even though I provide care to and serve the MAGA faithful on a daily basis with nothing but empathy and compassion.
Dan, I agree with you, but something you have failed to mention and perhaps you have a reason why, but, Reporters Without Borders, World Press Freedom Index now lists the US press at number 55. This is appalling. Can you address this please? This would really help to put things into perspective if it’s true.
My husband, who is French (and now) American, started in Vietnam when he was 18 as a French photojournalist. He remarked that even back then the Americans were not telling the truth or not the whole truth. The journalists were on the front lines and aware of what was happening, but at American press briefings they were laughing because what was being briefed was not true. My point is that there is a long history in the American press of lying or not revealing the whole truth either influence by politics or money. Let’s face it. The American press is corrupt.
Totally agree, Dan. It's shameful and why many of us have been criticizing the big media corps for the past 4 years. Appreciate your voice on this, but is the industry listening?
Media needs to do mea culpas. Be careful of blanket criticism of all media. It is noteworthy, how both parties and right and left were critical of the news. This contributed to a loss of trust in all media, which distrust disproportionately benefits one party.
Don't let DNC and its campaign consultants off the hook. Biden/Harris had several years to promote their projects. Why didn't DNC do ads showing people talking about how much money they saved thru Biden era tax credits and child care help and about new factory being built in background?
The corporate media's bias against democrats has been blatant for a long time. Go back and look at their coverage of the too intellectual Al Gore, who had the audacity to sigh during a debate, or the incessant overblown coverage of Hillary's emails. They've been doing it without consequence for so long that it was easy to ramp up to a standing level of disrespect, vilification, distortion and outright contempt for Biden. The media is to blame for the downplaying of climate change, the disastrous war in Iraq, income inequality and on and on. All of it. Of course our elected officials are responsible but they wouldn't have been in positions of power without the active support of big media.
Anyone who doubts what you say should read this description of how the media treated Gore:
“Going After Gore”
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/10/gore200710?srsltid=AfmBOopzGAPCF0VzqT0DLNK253B6PuAISfhI-GXSCZ4aBqHoBQ4FyaF8
And this:
“ The Times’ Frank Bruni, or How to Succeed in Journalism Without Really Caring (About Issues)
The newest columnist at The New York Times doesn’t have much to say about substantive issues, writes Eric Alterman.”
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/think-again-the-times-frank-bruni-or-how-to-succeed-in-journalism-without-really-caring-about-issues/
I really believe the underlying bias of our mainstream “liberal” media is subconscious sexism. There is research that shows people subconsciously think the Democrats are the “Mommy Party”, representing traditionally feminine values; Republicans are the “Strong Father” family and represent strength, toughness, power, etc.
I will never forget now the media was so obviously impressed by the tough guy macho swagger of Bush and Cheney when in reality they were both chickenhawks who did everything they could to avoid serving in a war they supported. Yet the media downplayed the draft avoidance of both men. In contrast they had previously crucified Bill Clinton as a draft dodger because he has take deferments (like Cheney) but eventually left his name in the draft and only avoided being called up by getting a high number in the lottery. And unlike the warmongering, draft-avoiding Bush and Cheney, Clinton was a very vocal opponent of the Vietnam War. (A war both Kerry and Gore served in.)
And then there was the fact the media gave Bush, who failed to complete his National Guard Service, a pass for trashing Kerry’s very real war heroism. The people behind the Swift Boaters’ slander were big Bush donors so there is no way Bush and Rove didn’t know what they were doing. By that time the media knew that Poppy Bush had personally approved the racist Willie Horton ad then lied by claiming he had had nothing to do with the independent group running it. They also knew Lee Atwater was the guy who had engineered the Willie Horton ad and the Karl Rove had been Atwater’s understudy.
The only Democrat in my lifetime that the media treated with the kind of respect they gave to Reagan and both Bushes was the glamorous playboy JFK. Carter and his people got the rube treatment and he was frequently described as a peanut farmer which was clearly not meant as a compliment. Both Clinton’s were treated as hillbilly con artists, even before the Monica insanity. (Given the media’s ongoing admiration for the very promiscuous JFK their outrage over Clinton was clear evidence of a double standard IMO). There has been more media outrage over than there ever was over Republicans holding multiple investigation of the insane, vicious and deeply cruel slander that the Clintons had murdered their close friend Vince Foster.
While agreeing with much of this, I have to correct this on one point. Clinton got a brief deferment from an order to report for duty because he promised Colonel Eugene Holmes he would join the ROTC. Clinton didn't, and indeed he told Holmes in a letter [1] that he did this to protect his future political viability. It was a very slippery move, legal but not particularly honorable.
Both Clintons had a problem with lawyering the truth, of not being fully forthcoming. "I did not have sex with that woman" was an example of trying to mislead by using the word "sex" to mean "intercourse."
It's not that the media are too hard on Democrats. It's that they simply refuse to be as hard on Republicans. A gunner in Poppy Bush's squadron claims that Bush abandoned the aircraft before his crew had a chance to get off [2]. It never got anywhere near the coverage that Colonel Holmes got, even though if (and, let's be clear, the claim is uncorroborated) the gunner's claim is true, Bush's action would have been far more dishonorable than Clinton's.
1. www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/clinton/etc/draftletter.html
2. www.upi.com/Archives/1988/08/12/Gunner-disputes-Bush-account-of-downed-plane/9438587361600/
Yup. All of it,
The economic reporting was actually *worse* than Dan makes out.
For example, were gas prices actually higher than usual? The Federal Reserve says no.
" Gas prices fluctuate dramatically, and gas prices have increased substantially since the 1990s, peaking in mid 2022...Adjusting for consumer price inflation... the real gas price has not been trending up and the 2022 peak in the first graph is surpassed on several occasions. [1]
Or this. Republican propaganda claims that Democrats providing income support to people suffering from the pandemic was responsible for inflation, the major component of which is housing. But they do not actually believe this. Texas Republican governor Gov. Greg Abbot says "This “corporate large-scale buying of residential homes seems to be distorting the market and making it harder for the average Texan to purchase a home,”" [2] The same sort of oligopoly exists in home builders, and has contributed to the slow pace of construction [3]. I can't tell you how many media reports I read about inflation that failed to point out that a major component of inflation was the weakness of anti-trust law.
Media almost never pointed out the obvious lies in reporting on Trump claims. The high cost of eggs driven by avian flu [4]. The fact that bacon prices have been flat in inflation-corrected terms [5]
Yes, these facts came out in little blips and drips. But they never attained narrative status. Plainly, reporters and editors are either too stupid and lazy to research their stories or the people who run the media don't want their readers/viewers to know what is actually going on. And they certainly aren't listening to readers who do know and try to tell them, because Lord knows I have tried.
To be fair, a lot of people wanted a scapegoat because it was easier than to do their part as citizens: to treat all major media skeptically, learn the basic facts for themselves, and talk to their neighbors.
I remember back when we wondered about how the Soviet people could be so blind as to believe the propaganda put out by the state. We have a country where the facts can still be found, and yet tens of millions of people believe lies that are easily debunked--many of the lies defying basic common sense (my favorite: Democrats are cheating in elections but Republicans, despite controlling most of the states, Congress in 2017-18, and the presidency 2017-2020 were unable to find and prosecute them; when Democrats controlled the White House, Republicans won.) The mind boggles at how stupid you have to be to believe these lies.
Old Joe Biden Effing Everything Up is an easy narrative to sell to a people who to a disturbing degree despise expertise, prefer entertainment to truth, and have forgotten that we are all in this together... reality will spare none of us when the problems we have neglected due to this right-wing food fight cause the next economic collapse or the implosion of American power.
1. fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2023/07/are-real-gasoline-prices-really-higher/
2. www.realtor.com/news/trends/wall-street-has-spent-billions-buying-homes-a-crackdown-is-looming/
3. www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/10/17/economists-identify-an-unseen-force-holding-back-affordable-housing/
4. www.cnn.com/2024/09/25/business/egg-prices-groceries-inflation-bird-flu/index.html
5. www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/bacon-prices-by-year-and-adjusted-for-inflation/
Also the high gas prices were caused in large part by Putin invading Ukraine and at one point the Saudis cutting back on production. I was furious that the news article (in the WaPo I think) about the announcement that gas prices had dropped sharply and were at near-normal levels was buried on back pages with small headlines but the front page but the front page had a prominent article about the high price of eggs. And the implication that Biden was responsible for inflation that was world wide, accomplished by obsessing over US inflation while ignoring inflation everywhere else was deeply dishonest.
This is the same media that obsessed over the national debt in the 90s, constantly reporting on the debt clock of doom, then refused to acknowledge that Clinton and the Dems balanced the budget and had a surplus that they were using to pay down the debt that the media — and Republicans — claimed to be so worried about. Then when Bush ran he explicitly claiming the surplus was proof taxes were too high and that he would destroy it with tax cuts. In contrast Gore repeatedly advocated continuing to use the surplus to pay down the debt. Instead of slamming Bush the media decided that what mattered wasn’t the debt but that Bush would be “more fun to have a beer with”.
I turned off MSNBC at 8:30 pm (CT) and cancelled my subscription to HULU Live. I got into my car Wednesday morning and NPR automatically was on. I listened for 30 seconds and then turn it off. Yesterday I peeked at the headlines on both my MSNBC and NPR apps and in response to what I saw, deleted them. (PBS Newshour survives...so far). Going forward I will read only the handful of journalists and historians I follow here on Substack, like you Dan. Thank you, for your straightforwardness. It's much appreciated.
Who do you follow? I recommend Aaron Rupar, James Fallows, Margaret Sullivan, Dean Baker, Eric Alterman and Paul Waldman for starters.
off top of head-- Oliver Willis, Hamilton Nolan, Eric Topol (translational medicine), Sherrilyn Ifill doesn't post often but her piece was the most compelling I read Wednesday morning, Jarad Yates Sexton, Sarah Kendzior
Great list! I need to check out Dean Baker and Eric Alterman. I follow the others. Thanks!
As a retired print reporter/editor from a metro daily, I’d like to take issue with your take, but I can’t. My former colleagues (particularly editors who knew better) are guilty as charged. Objectivity was not the goal. It was instead “balance” taken to a perverse extreme. Industry wide. Balance that concealed truth.
I actually agree with Dean Baker that the media has a strong bias for conservative economics which is why they refuse to give Biden credit for making our economy what the Economist recently called “the envy of the world”. Baker calls it “media macro”.
I agree 100%. Four decades ago, newspapers decided that economic reporting and explaining how things worked was important. That focus evaporated in this century, leaving at least one generation and probably two without even a basic understanding about how the US economy functions. Americans are woefully ignorant of how the pieces of the puzzle work. Instead of honest explanations of who things were working and what a Trump’s policies would do, reporting on the economy focused on the doom and gloom it meant for Biden’s, then Harris’, election prospects.
For the Biden administration to have kept inflation from rising would have taken near-Stalin levels of intervention--the sorts of policies that would have been denounced as harming the free market.
One Washington Post columnist wrote that Trump won because Americans hate inflation more than job losses. If Trump manages to execute his tariff and deportation plans, they’ll have both.
As long as news sources are owned by billionaires, the truth will be something that you will need to dig up yourself. (Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Rupert Murdoch, Patrick Soon-Shiong are 4 who have remade their tools into pure propaganda machines) X should go away, The Washington Post , New York Posts, and LA Times, need to be independent or they will wither and die.
Oddly, newspapers have been owned by rich, white men for more than a century. The difference is how those owners view the world, their place in it and whether they have the power to push back against a demagogue. Forty, 50 years ago and before, they did have that power. In the post-Reagan era, Republicans decided they lost because of what they contend was media bias, taking no responsibility for their losing ideas and policies or defending them with lies. In the present, traditional media’s influence has waned and while the influence of podcasts and websites has risen, it’s nowhere near the king-making levels of 19th and 20th centuries. The diffusive nature of media today serves mis- and disinformation quite well. John Locke’s ideal of a free marketplace of ideas has been turned into an open sewer.
The difference is that they had money, For modern Billionaires, the Money has Them.
Republicans made a concerted effort to intimidate the media, even before Reagan Spiro Agnew used a lot of the same attacks, even the same wording, as Trump made. There was also a wealthy right wing man (can’t remember his name) who bought enough shares of the NYTimes that he got a seat on the board. He was so disruptive that he was given private meetings with the top brass to get him out of the board meetings. This was decades ago.
Mark Hertsgaard wrote in his excellent book “On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency” that two of Reagan’s top aides, David Gergen and Richard Darman admitted that Reagan’s Teflon was mainky due not to Reagan’s personality, but to the media holding back criticism. They ascribed this not just to reporters but to their bosses. For example tough coverage of Reagan’s economic policies or of the brutal regime in El Salvador that Reagan supported was reigned in by media bosses.
During the Raygun years, INS went after a church in Tucson that was giving immigrants sanctuary.
Spiro called the press plenty of names, but his corruption got him in the end. Nixon got away with more than Watergate, with Kissinger’s help.
If Americans want to know why so many people from Central America are coming here, they need look no further than US foreign policy, especially in the 1980s.
I agree with you, Dan. Thanks for consistently raising the issue and pointing the finger now.
Agreed - Day after election I wrote: After canvassing and talking with folks outside of my own bubble my thoughts are (IMHO, YMMV): The racists gonna racist; sexists gonna sexist. At least in what was expressed to me it wasn't even the anti-Trans fear-mongering. The SWING vote Trump losing popular vote to Clinton and Biden but winning it against Harris) was mostly due to false media narrative on economy. It would have been nice if non-Fox mainstream media had gone with honest factual reporting of who and what Trump and Repuglicans actually are day-in-day-out instead predigested even-hand/ both-sadism and sane-washing. And also if there was truthful reporting, hammering on the actual economic improvement since 2022, every day for past 2 years. Over past 3 years actual jobs way up, actual crime way down; over past 2 years actual inflation down... talking to folks in small towns PA... SWING voters (my canvassing lists were folks who have voted Dem at least at some point in recent past; but mostly infrequent, intermittent, lower-information voters) thought the opposite and blamed Dems. At least in my conversations, LGBT did not come up. Immigration contextualized with jobs. On the single issue by single issue we win... Abortion protections won majority votes (remember Florida was actually 57% for protection), paid leave won. Same swing voters who voted for those, even down-ballot for House, then voted Trump on false narrative mostly on economy. Dems, especially the left-progressive wing, objectively better on economy in general. Dems getting blamed unilaterally for NAFTA is another example of media supporting false narrative. And the success of the immigrant fearmongering in expanding the xenophobic reaction is also tied to crap media narrative on actual economy, and silencing of progressive Dems better solutions."
Hard agree
The only way I can describe it is abject apathy on the part MSM. And now they will spend months and months navel gazing trying to convince their readers who haven’t jumped ship that they don’t know how they missed the mood in America and couldn’t deliver the coverage and analysis Americans needed to avert what people should consider a shocking and devastating electoral outcome. I’m numb, TBH.
Agree. This is the legacy of decades of deregulation; lack of advocacy on media policy esp digital ( inc privacy which reflects the commercial surveillance biz model that dominates all digital media); related failure to develop governance proposals for diversity of ownership and content, inc for platforms. Reforming US digital media must be on agenda for democratic renewal, esp as AI, data practices, omnichannel behaviors, further consolidation and alignment fosters more powerful and less accountable media environment. Jeff Chester, Center for Digital Democracy.
And we can now look forward to four years of normalization and sanewashing Trump, four years of excuses for MAGA overreach, four years of magnifying any small Democratic misstep, and four years whining and complaining about obstructionist Democrats when they push back on some MAGA outrage. The elite media is full of itself, and totally full of shit. And I for one will shed no tears when Trump orders the NYT and the WaPo shutdown as subversive outlets.
I'm a bit more optimistic than that.
The sad part is that WaPo and NYT are arguably the most liberal parts of the MSM. But WaPo has been deep in the red for years, and it's just Bezos's vanity that hasn't seen it shuttered. Or worse, sold (like WSJ) to Murdoch.
I wish Bezo's ex-wife MacKenzie Scott had received WaPo in their divorce settlement. She is a philanthropist, he is a panderer.
Gods, but I Like the way you think!
Aww thanks. Likewise.
Apparently Kara Swisher has talked about getting a group together to buy the WaPo.
So defeatist. Off to the jungles of Africa with you.
As someone who spent close to 30 years in mainstream journalism in radio, print, and online, I think the OP is closer to the truth than you are. A lot closer. And what, exactly, did you mean by "Off to the jungles of Africa with you"? Because my first guess is extremely unflattering to you.
And what are the odds that the press does nothing when Trump takes credit for the effects of the Biden economic recovery, effects of the IRA, etc., as he did when he inherited Obama's economy? No push-back then, likely none coming this time. Frankly, though, I suspect that even if you provided every Trump voter with an easy-to-follow collection of misinformation/disinformation rebuttals, they still would stick with what they hear on FAUX "News" and their like iterations. And, of course my post will cause me to be doxxed as an out of touch elitist, even though I provide care to and serve the MAGA faithful on a daily basis with nothing but empathy and compassion.
Dan, I agree with you, but something you have failed to mention and perhaps you have a reason why, but, Reporters Without Borders, World Press Freedom Index now lists the US press at number 55. This is appalling. Can you address this please? This would really help to put things into perspective if it’s true.
My husband, who is French (and now) American, started in Vietnam when he was 18 as a French photojournalist. He remarked that even back then the Americans were not telling the truth or not the whole truth. The journalists were on the front lines and aware of what was happening, but at American press briefings they were laughing because what was being briefed was not true. My point is that there is a long history in the American press of lying or not revealing the whole truth either influence by politics or money. Let’s face it. The American press is corrupt.
Totally agree, Dan. It's shameful and why many of us have been criticizing the big media corps for the past 4 years. Appreciate your voice on this, but is the industry listening?
Media needs to do mea culpas. Be careful of blanket criticism of all media. It is noteworthy, how both parties and right and left were critical of the news. This contributed to a loss of trust in all media, which distrust disproportionately benefits one party.
Don't let DNC and its campaign consultants off the hook. Biden/Harris had several years to promote their projects. Why didn't DNC do ads showing people talking about how much money they saved thru Biden era tax credits and child care help and about new factory being built in background?