So much blame to go around, but I keep coming back to then-CBS CEO Les Moonves famous remark of 2016, when US media was milking the Trump circus for clicks, and thereby elevating and normalizing a dangerous criminal.
Future historians, if there are any, will marvel.
New York Times, November 7, 2024:
When Donald J. Trump pulled off a surprise victory against Hillary Clinton in 2016, the news media was a major beneficiary, as viewers stayed glued to cable news and readers signed up for newspaper subscriptions in droves.
Eight years later, Mr. Trump’s definitive White House victory could lead to another spike of audience interest in the news — at least in the short term — numerous experts said.
Cable news ratings, subscriptions to digital news organizations and philanthropic giving will probably increase, as audiences sort through a news-intensive post-election period. But that enthusiasm could wear off in the coming weeks and months as viewers become exhausted by the relentless news cycle.
“Trump 2.0 will likely be a very different administration than we saw before,” said Frank Sesno, a professor at George Washington University and a former Washington bureau chief of CNN. “That will carry immense consequences and news value. It will energize right-wing media, and it will panic the left.”
The New York Times, The Washington Post and other newspapers saw a sudden influx of subscriptions in 2016 as readers puzzled through the consequences of Mr. Trump’s initial victory. Those news organizations capitalized on that surge with ad campaigns embracing new readers and, in the case of The Washington Post, adopting a slogan that underscored a commitment to aggressive reporting: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
I just canceled my subscriptions to NYT and Washington Post. Although much of their journalism is very good, they failed at their most important task – to hold DJT accountable and actively prevent him from running for re-election.
Todd – do what you want, but the NYT and WaPo are not at fault. A conservative in this country would consider them to be hilariously biased towards Democrats, and they don’t read them often, anyway – preferring their own brands of media. The problem here in the States is that we have developed into a rural/poorer section (consistently vote R) and a wealthy urban/coastal section (consistently vote D) and a massive disconnect between the two sides, with people siloed into their own media sources. The NYT and WaPo firmly are in the urban coastal sections. They try to have conservative voices occasionally in a futile (and likely misguided) attempt to draw in conservative readers, but 90%+ of their coverage is not that way. The front page of the NYT for the past week has had a bold headline from the editorial staff urging people to vote for Harris and warning about Trump. Many journalists quit WaPo because Bezos wouldn’t allow the same, but that still doesn’t change the fact that they also have majority D voices. Both are reliable sources of news for someone who isn’t conservative – punishing them imo does zero good and more harm.
NYT and WaPo did more than their fair share of “sanewashing” Trump’s most horrid rhetoric. One blog I follow regularly put up the actual video of Trump’s behavior at rallies next to their highly softened interpretation of what Trump was spouting, using euphemisms to report Trump’s violent imagery and no mention of the petty slurs that he used on any and all of his political opponents.
It didn’t help that the commentariat of that blog has a good grasp of world history and the meaninglessness of “it can’t happen here” (e.g., Stephen Miller truly is Goebbels reincarnated).
For decades they’ve been gorging on resentment media, which is very lucrative variant on “limbic media” in general. And I don’t think “conservative” is the right term for them, as they pretty much replaced an adult balanced conservative view with radical disinformation, bald reactionary opinions and a craving to own the libs.
I would bet if the NYT or WP tried to classify themselves it would be centrist, although they are both firmly in the urban coastal areas and so lean left. In addition to the ‘sanewashing’, which they would label as journalistic objectivity, and they are trained to do that, they ran constant articles about how Trump is a total nutjob.
There has been a massive and historic ground shift in American politics – the right has captured the working class, as ridiculous as that sounds and actually is, it’s happened. Focus should be on how to win them back – not blaming the NYT or WP for not acting and sounding like leftist blogs. And besides, the people reading those papers regularly are educated and living in a wealthy party of the country, and almost certainly voted D. They know what’s what, and they don’t need to be coddled with 100% left-wing talking points. The other people voting for Trump weren’t reading the Post or Times, they were listening to Rogan and getting their info from social media. The NYT and WP are close to the last to blame for all of what has happened. Punishing them now by withdrawing subscriptions only harms readers who want news from more reasonable sources (at least trying for journalistic objectivity) than Fox News, etc., in the future.
Mainstream media does deserve blame, though, when they have intentionally posted Trump stories for the clicks and views. That was most egregious when they gave non-stop coverage to Trump during the 2016 Republican primaries. It made it impossible for the other Republican candidates that year to compete with him. They basically elected the guy back then. But, that was 8 years ago. There are other much more important factors for why Trump won this year.
Agree with your last paragraph.
Both organizations have published climate denying delayalism; WAPO as a matter of course, NYT less commonly but provocatively. Brett Stephens e.g.. For decades they both have generally (by which I mean almost always) used the right’s language when it mattered—freedom fighters vs death squads or terrorists, for example, from whatever direction was the right’s view, not the left’s. Their sources were almost all establishment sources with right-of-center viewpoints, which means they essentially always left the left view out, making the liberal view or even right-of-center seem left to less informed readers. How that can be construed as anything but far right is beyond me. Now, of course, just reporting science is considered comminist by those on the far right, while honestly pointing out climate denying delayalism & ARF (anti-renewable) lies is far too commonly reacted to as if it’s so far to the left of communism it can only be called the work of Satan…by those actually doing the work of Satan & calling it God’s.
The Guardian is progressive, Common Dreams, The Intercept. KPFA / Pacifica Radio is progressive. Nothing published by a large corporation in the US is remotely progressive, barely even liberal.
A good analysis of U.S. and global voting trends from the terrible, awful, far right NYT:
I Study Guys Like Trump. There’s a Reason They Keep Winning.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/08/opinion/republicans-democrats-trump.html
“In the West, neoliberalism — that blend of free trade, deregulation and deference to financial markets — hollowed-out communities while enriching a global oligarchy. Meanwhile, a homogenized and often crass popular culture eroded traditional national and religious identities. After 9/11, the war on terror was embraced by autocrats such as Mr. Putin, who used it as a frame to justify power grabs while forever wars fueled mass migration. The financial crisis came through like a hurricane, wrecking the lives of people already struggling to get by while the rich profited on the back end. Then social media’s explosion offered a vehicle to spread grievance and conspiracy theories, allowing populist leaders to radicalize their followers with the precision of an algorithm.
The playbook for transforming a democracy into a soft autocracy was clear: Win power with a populist message against elites. Redraw parliamentary districts. Change voting laws. Harass civil society. Pack courts with judges willing to support power grabs. Enrich cronies through corruption. Buy up newspapers and television stations and turn them into right-wing propaganda. Use social media to energize supporters. Wrap it up in an Us versus Them message: Us, the “real” Russians or Hungarians or Americans, against a rotating cast of Them: the migrants, the Muslims, the liberals, the gays, George Soros and on and on.”
The most important point is being missed here. First, the public pressure to impeach and convict DJT should have been pushed by NYT and WAPO directly on Mitch Mconnel. That would have ended politics for DJT. It did not happen. THEN, Attorney General Merrick Garland had three years to convict Trump as the insurrectionist he is. Neither NYT nor WAPO pushed on this, Biden forgot it entirely. And this allowed DJT to run for re-election. All the policy debate after this is irrelevant. As soon as DJT was seen as the alternative to Biden, and then Harris, the election was in retrospect over. Harris has a fantastic campaign and a billion dollars to run it. Still not enough.
Maybe the press has more power in Norway than in the U.S., but a newspaper here can’t force the public to do anything, especially when only a minority of the public reads them. If you want me to provide 100 examples of articles from them expressing a desire to keep Trump from the White House, I can, but it’s pointless – Congress, the judicial system, and the Republican Party are the only ones that could have prevented him from running again.
Here’s just one:
The Trump dictatorship: How to stop it
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/12/07/robert-kagan-trump-dictatorship-how-to-stop/
The fault is with the U S. government if anywhere. In the courts, there were too many separate cases conflicting with each other, it took forever to bring charges, Jack Smith made a huge blunder bringing charges to Florida, and all of that prevented anything from happening in time.
Congress didn’t pass anything that could have prevented him. Where is the outrage at Democrats for not doing that during the first two years after Trump? Or the January 6 Commission taking years to come to a conclusion? And once the Republicans took the House, there was no way anything would happen in Congress.
And the Republicans proved themselves to be spineless, as they always are, when the public isn’t behind them. They kicked out any Republican opposing Trump. Mitch McConnell is a coward, Todd. His constituents and fellow Congressmen would have lynched him if he moved against Trump directly.
On newspapers, again, the vast majority of the American public don’t read them. The NYT has a subscriber base of 11 million people, and that’s 1 in 30 Americans, assuming every one of those 11 million subscribers is American. There are vast swathes of the country that despise the NYT as a liberal rag, and there are an even larger number than that who never read any newspaper period, or care about them.
Frankly, here’s the average American:
https://boingboing.net/2024/11/07/voters-claim-they-voted-day-after-election-in-kimmel-street-interview.html/amp
We are not Norway in average education levels and individual wealth. We’re closer to a third world country in that respect. How is the NYT let alone the WP going to affect that?
Commission/Committee – formation of commission failed to pass, committee (a weakened version) took 1.5 years to reach a conclusion
On Merrick Garland:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/06/19/fbi-resisted-opening-probe-into-trumps-role-jan-6-more-than-year/
McConnell:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/11/08/mitch-mcconnell-trump-impeachment-insurrection-senate/
Miscalculations, cowardice, personal ambition, the insufferably long time it takes for the government to move, etc. That’s where the blame should fall – not the NYT and WP for somehow not being able to magically change all that. They did try to hold these people accountable, but what the news does first is report the news after it happens, and the NYT and WP are very close to our (American) only sources of reliably doing that without ridiculous levels of bias, and they often do it with tenacity and courage. Withdrawing support from them threatens that – and that is my main argument here.