This is way, way too kind to the MSM IMHO. For starters, you don’t engage with the incredibly bad headlines we’re seeing, which matters because the mostly-disengaged voters who will decide this election often only scan headlines. It doesn’t matter how nuanced and/or critical of Trump the story is if the headline whitewashes him, which we’ve seen over and over. Nor do you address how Trump’s incoherent rambling, rather than be simply quoted word for word, gets cleaned up to make his comments appear coherent and normal. Behavior like this has dragged me reluctantly into the camp that is convinced they actively want him to win.
I grant we don't know for sure. And certainly they aren't completely abdicating ALL journalistic standards.
But I think we need a much more subtle explanation than this because they are, in fact, being decitful, and concealing very evident aspects of reality.
And that's STRANGE. That's a really PECULIAR thing to do. If you look at the NYT from, e.g., 1957, you will see there was much less spin, much more straight reporting. 'A said x, y, z...' The headlines would be something like 'Trump Speaks To Mother's Group'
They would mainly quote him, with a lot less editorializing, scene setting, etc.
Surely there was a lot of concealment and deception but there was a different ethos.
This is only ONE small part of what someone would need to look at to genuinely give an account of what's going on with them.
It seems complex, but there's clearly a strong desire to shape the entire political narrative, to MAKE it seem like something it isn't. You absolutely DON'T have to do that to cover candidates.
Just a wild thought: Too many journos these days are lib arts majors from elite schools who want to make themselves the center of the action rather than old-school gumshoe investigative reporters (who often didn't go to college) just looking to report the facts?
That’s possible. It could have some kind of demographic explanation. But I think it would go along with a bunch of other things—like what the function of newspapers is seen as being, and what motivates people to read them, etc. All that seems to have shifted somewhat.
But sometimes we DO get ‘the scoops’ from the ‘hungry reporter’ who is not an ivy grad but we get it on substack or twitter or wherever. There are a bunch of ‘independent journalists’ out there doing that. NYT wouldn’t hire them. They seem ‘radical’ to them maybe? They don’t want people ‘breaking news’ too much? I don’t know why! They would rather pay heaps of cash to Pamela Paul who literally cannot write her way out of a paper bag than than have 10 reporters covering City Hall.
Maybe they think we won’t pay to read that. Or the rich people won’t? I don’t get it.
It’s just weird to me not even in terms of politics. I really think we could have a gigantic tsunami like the one 20 years ago that hit multiple countries and the big papers would barely report it. Remember how people paid attention to that?
But Fox News wouldn’t care. And that’s what has happened.
So it’s the sick shit picked up from the UK. Our papers are like ‘The Daily Mail.’ We have Murdoch newspapers but they’re called the NYT, WaPo, and WSJ (that he owns). You can see that through the transgender obsession.
I’m so tired of reading about how the media is “getting it wrong” — they are not getting it wrong — they are not the ones who are trying to kick the football here, *we* are!
It is the media who keeps pulling it away at the last second. And it's not the *amount* of coverage that implies which candidate they want to win, it is the tone.
They are never going to “get it right” because they believe they already are. And yes, the New York Times wants Trump to win. They’re not just normalizing him, they are literally lying on his behalf, so that he seems more electable, less himself—that’s not normalizing, it’s *glorifying.*
Thank you for writing about this. The media is out of control and we , the American public, are pretty sick and tired of their love affair with all things trump.
The fact checking of the conventions showed what’s going on. They are so scared of being told by gop staffers they have bias, they go out of their way to show bias towards gop.
It's like nyt has seen how Trump goes after attention above all and now they chase attention above all by trolling their readers and care much less less about their reporting. It resembles Hunger Games and it's show time. It's disgusting and I hope for a change.
Daniel W. Drezner: As John Lennon sang, "Strange days, indeed!"
It is very strange when the media mainstreams a candidate whose rhetoric is "Blut und Erde" (Blood and Soil) where immigrants "poison our blood" and so-called "Moms for Liberty" [sic!] INTENTIONALLY quote H-i-t-l-e-r .
Your footnote is a m-u-s-t read:
"“Certainly, in the history of narrative, there have been writers celebrated for their ability to be discursive only to cleverly tie together all their themes with a neat bow at the end — William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and Larry David come to mind. But in the case of Mr. Trump, it is difficult to find the hermeneutic methods with which to parse the linguistic flights that take him from electrocuted sharks to Hannibal Lecter’s cannibalism, windmills and Rosie O’Donnell.”
"* * * remember, the spike in interest in this election came when Harris supplanted Biden. No, the press is just covering Trump like a normie candidate because they don’t know what else to do — and covering Trump like a normal person humanizes him way more than he merits.
"This frustrates those who find Trump to be a unique threat to democracy. Hopefully, for the reasons provided above, it will also not matter."
And, not to forget the "Hitler reference":
"Then there is the New York Times, which had a whole host of stories with some rather bizarre errors and frames over the past weekend. One story on Trump speaking at the Moms for Liberty conference had to include the following correction: “An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that a local chapter of Moms for Liberty had accidentally quoted Adolf Hitler in a newsletter. The group, which later issued an apology, was aware that the quote was from Hitler when the newsletter was published.”
"A good rule of thumb for a news organization: if you can’t get a Hitler attribution right the first time, maybe engage in a little introspection.1"
"A lot of folks believe the media wants Trump to win." How can anyone say that? In the last two cycles newspapers everywhere almost unanimously endorsed his opponent, and doubtless will again.
Doesn’t matter when they whitewash him on a daily basis. The headlines, which are all most undecided voters are going to see, are especially egregious. They can feel ok about themselves by endorsing Harris, but their behavior is totally supportive of Trump.
I think there's an allied feeling on the part of Democrats that if only [insert this establishment part] is clear about how bad Trump is that the voters will wake and realize they shouldn't support him. "If only the media would tell everyone how awful he is, surely he'll lose support!" When that doesn't work, it's easy to blame the media (or whichever part) rather than the voters.
You’re right that this may well be wishful thinking on the Dems’ part, but that doesn’t excuse the MSM’s utter unwillingness to accurately present Trump as a dangerous candidate.
“Economists have doubts” are weasel words. Who are these economists? The usual supply-side charlatans and “libertarian” ideologues funded by far right “think”tanks who refuse to acknowledge that decades of data have proved their anti/government, pro-rich guy tax cuts and fiscal responsibility claims are all false? Or maybe the more mainstream economists like Larry Summers who insisted we had to have a recession to break inflation?
I just listened to "On The Media" on NPR, and immediately sought this article.
My wife and I have noted the evolution (devolution?) of media coverage since the Obama administration. The barrage of concerns dominating the news cycle, focusing on concerns for Biden's age and apparent advancing infirmity, including an endless stream of pundits calling for some action/addressing of those concerns, seemed directly related to Biden decision to drop out of the race. Conversely, since 2019 and continuing today, we've noted the palpable lack of critical or aggressive commentary regarding Trump's boorish and childish name-calling, incoherent rambling, and flat out lying. For example, kind of ironically, just before the On The Media broadcast, there was an NPR news summary report of Trump's recent response to a question about child care. The summary seemed to characterize his response as somewhat reasonable, when it fact...if you listen to the text of his response...you realize it was a rambling, incoherent mess.
We both believe that at the end of the day, the role of the press is to report the objective, unvarnished truth, so that we the people can decide. The media has sorely failed us in this regard to date
My own assumption has always been that, as an advertising supported business model, you just cannot say things that offend 40% of your advertisers' customers. Musk can do that, but not ABC. I don't need to call them malicious or evil or even incompetent. Just constrained by the business model. If enough flat-earthers are customers of your advertisers, then, by golly yes, "opinions on the shape of the earth differ." That pandering is _exactly_! what is meant by a "free press".
The Democrats have reached the same conclusion and given up on the media. Harris ticked the box by giving one sit-down interview, but there probably won't be any more.
Another great piece but I've got to question the end. How can we definitively say the media is largely controlled by men and entities that support Trump?
Saying, well, Harris has been profitable for them ignores the reality that the ultra rich don't actually care about profits, at least when compared to their power and their love of white supremacy.
I'd like to see the claim that the media isn't pro Trump unpacked. To be clear, I think most reporters want *Harris* to win. I don't think they're neutral. But I think the people who control the news rooms and own the media want Trump to win, even if it costs them a fortune.
I was just thinking how hermeneutic this race is…
This is way, way too kind to the MSM IMHO. For starters, you don’t engage with the incredibly bad headlines we’re seeing, which matters because the mostly-disengaged voters who will decide this election often only scan headlines. It doesn’t matter how nuanced and/or critical of Trump the story is if the headline whitewashes him, which we’ve seen over and over. Nor do you address how Trump’s incoherent rambling, rather than be simply quoted word for word, gets cleaned up to make his comments appear coherent and normal. Behavior like this has dragged me reluctantly into the camp that is convinced they actively want him to win.
I grant we don't know for sure. And certainly they aren't completely abdicating ALL journalistic standards.
But I think we need a much more subtle explanation than this because they are, in fact, being decitful, and concealing very evident aspects of reality.
And that's STRANGE. That's a really PECULIAR thing to do. If you look at the NYT from, e.g., 1957, you will see there was much less spin, much more straight reporting. 'A said x, y, z...' The headlines would be something like 'Trump Speaks To Mother's Group'
They would mainly quote him, with a lot less editorializing, scene setting, etc.
Surely there was a lot of concealment and deception but there was a different ethos.
This is only ONE small part of what someone would need to look at to genuinely give an account of what's going on with them.
It seems complex, but there's clearly a strong desire to shape the entire political narrative, to MAKE it seem like something it isn't. You absolutely DON'T have to do that to cover candidates.
Just a wild thought: Too many journos these days are lib arts majors from elite schools who want to make themselves the center of the action rather than old-school gumshoe investigative reporters (who often didn't go to college) just looking to report the facts?
That’s possible. It could have some kind of demographic explanation. But I think it would go along with a bunch of other things—like what the function of newspapers is seen as being, and what motivates people to read them, etc. All that seems to have shifted somewhat.
But sometimes we DO get ‘the scoops’ from the ‘hungry reporter’ who is not an ivy grad but we get it on substack or twitter or wherever. There are a bunch of ‘independent journalists’ out there doing that. NYT wouldn’t hire them. They seem ‘radical’ to them maybe? They don’t want people ‘breaking news’ too much? I don’t know why! They would rather pay heaps of cash to Pamela Paul who literally cannot write her way out of a paper bag than than have 10 reporters covering City Hall.
Maybe they think we won’t pay to read that. Or the rich people won’t? I don’t get it.
It’s just weird to me not even in terms of politics. I really think we could have a gigantic tsunami like the one 20 years ago that hit multiple countries and the big papers would barely report it. Remember how people paid attention to that?
But Fox News wouldn’t care. And that’s what has happened.
So it’s the sick shit picked up from the UK. Our papers are like ‘The Daily Mail.’ We have Murdoch newspapers but they’re called the NYT, WaPo, and WSJ (that he owns). You can see that through the transgender obsession.
It’s the Fox Newsification of everything.
I’m so tired of reading about how the media is “getting it wrong” — they are not getting it wrong — they are not the ones who are trying to kick the football here, *we* are!
It is the media who keeps pulling it away at the last second. And it's not the *amount* of coverage that implies which candidate they want to win, it is the tone.
They are never going to “get it right” because they believe they already are. And yes, the New York Times wants Trump to win. They’re not just normalizing him, they are literally lying on his behalf, so that he seems more electable, less himself—that’s not normalizing, it’s *glorifying.*
Thank you for writing about this. The media is out of control and we , the American public, are pretty sick and tired of their love affair with all things trump.
The fact checking of the conventions showed what’s going on. They are so scared of being told by gop staffers they have bias, they go out of their way to show bias towards gop.
It's like nyt has seen how Trump goes after attention above all and now they chase attention above all by trolling their readers and care much less less about their reporting. It resembles Hunger Games and it's show time. It's disgusting and I hope for a change.
Daniel W. Drezner: As John Lennon sang, "Strange days, indeed!"
It is very strange when the media mainstreams a candidate whose rhetoric is "Blut und Erde" (Blood and Soil) where immigrants "poison our blood" and so-called "Moms for Liberty" [sic!] INTENTIONALLY quote H-i-t-l-e-r .
Your footnote is a m-u-s-t read:
"“Certainly, in the history of narrative, there have been writers celebrated for their ability to be discursive only to cleverly tie together all their themes with a neat bow at the end — William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and Larry David come to mind. But in the case of Mr. Trump, it is difficult to find the hermeneutic methods with which to parse the linguistic flights that take him from electrocuted sharks to Hannibal Lecter’s cannibalism, windmills and Rosie O’Donnell.”
"* * * remember, the spike in interest in this election came when Harris supplanted Biden. No, the press is just covering Trump like a normie candidate because they don’t know what else to do — and covering Trump like a normal person humanizes him way more than he merits.
"This frustrates those who find Trump to be a unique threat to democracy. Hopefully, for the reasons provided above, it will also not matter."
And, not to forget the "Hitler reference":
"Then there is the New York Times, which had a whole host of stories with some rather bizarre errors and frames over the past weekend. One story on Trump speaking at the Moms for Liberty conference had to include the following correction: “An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that a local chapter of Moms for Liberty had accidentally quoted Adolf Hitler in a newsletter. The group, which later issued an apology, was aware that the quote was from Hitler when the newsletter was published.”
"A good rule of thumb for a news organization: if you can’t get a Hitler attribution right the first time, maybe engage in a little introspection.1"
Very strange, indeed!
"A lot of folks believe the media wants Trump to win." How can anyone say that? In the last two cycles newspapers everywhere almost unanimously endorsed his opponent, and doubtless will again.
Doesn’t matter when they whitewash him on a daily basis. The headlines, which are all most undecided voters are going to see, are especially egregious. They can feel ok about themselves by endorsing Harris, but their behavior is totally supportive of Trump.
I think there's an allied feeling on the part of Democrats that if only [insert this establishment part] is clear about how bad Trump is that the voters will wake and realize they shouldn't support him. "If only the media would tell everyone how awful he is, surely he'll lose support!" When that doesn't work, it's easy to blame the media (or whichever part) rather than the voters.
You’re right that this may well be wishful thinking on the Dems’ part, but that doesn’t excuse the MSM’s utter unwillingness to accurately present Trump as a dangerous candidate.
I didn't say it did.
True
“Economists have doubts” are weasel words. Who are these economists? The usual supply-side charlatans and “libertarian” ideologues funded by far right “think”tanks who refuse to acknowledge that decades of data have proved their anti/government, pro-rich guy tax cuts and fiscal responsibility claims are all false? Or maybe the more mainstream economists like Larry Summers who insisted we had to have a recession to break inflation?
I just listened to "On The Media" on NPR, and immediately sought this article.
My wife and I have noted the evolution (devolution?) of media coverage since the Obama administration. The barrage of concerns dominating the news cycle, focusing on concerns for Biden's age and apparent advancing infirmity, including an endless stream of pundits calling for some action/addressing of those concerns, seemed directly related to Biden decision to drop out of the race. Conversely, since 2019 and continuing today, we've noted the palpable lack of critical or aggressive commentary regarding Trump's boorish and childish name-calling, incoherent rambling, and flat out lying. For example, kind of ironically, just before the On The Media broadcast, there was an NPR news summary report of Trump's recent response to a question about child care. The summary seemed to characterize his response as somewhat reasonable, when it fact...if you listen to the text of his response...you realize it was a rambling, incoherent mess.
We both believe that at the end of the day, the role of the press is to report the objective, unvarnished truth, so that we the people can decide. The media has sorely failed us in this regard to date
My own assumption has always been that, as an advertising supported business model, you just cannot say things that offend 40% of your advertisers' customers. Musk can do that, but not ABC. I don't need to call them malicious or evil or even incompetent. Just constrained by the business model. If enough flat-earthers are customers of your advertisers, then, by golly yes, "opinions on the shape of the earth differ." That pandering is _exactly_! what is meant by a "free press".
Not many MAGA subscribe to the NYT, though.
The Democrats have reached the same conclusion and given up on the media. Harris ticked the box by giving one sit-down interview, but there probably won't be any more.
Another great piece but I've got to question the end. How can we definitively say the media is largely controlled by men and entities that support Trump?
Saying, well, Harris has been profitable for them ignores the reality that the ultra rich don't actually care about profits, at least when compared to their power and their love of white supremacy.
I'd like to see the claim that the media isn't pro Trump unpacked. To be clear, I think most reporters want *Harris* to win. I don't think they're neutral. But I think the people who control the news rooms and own the media want Trump to win, even if it costs them a fortune.
Excellent commentary! Please compare “Harris” to Trump, rather than “Kamala”. Js.