Each of us can do our job to share clear-cut facts, even if we're not journalists working for newspapers.
What you said here — "Trump appointed three justices who all wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade. Subsequently, they did so" — is a very easy thing to share on social media, and I just did so.
It so happens that I blogged a similar sentence yesterday. A couple days ago, Trump made news for saying he'd consider restricting birth control and was about to issue a "very comprehensive" policy; predictably, he changed his mind a few hours later and swore he'd "never" do so. I took that opportunity to remind my readers of Trump's record. It's a huge red flag when he pretends not to know what his own position on birth control is — for one thing, he's had five children with three wives, in addition to deliberately bringing about the end of Roe v. Wade — and there's no reason for anyone to infantilize him. Also, I pulled up the Project 2025 policy document, searched for "contracepti–", and there was the beginning of the Republican plan for it. If we really want to know what Republican policy is, we'd do better to consult Project 2025 than scry Trump's word salad.
We bloggers can also do our part to restate obvious facts, and maybe some newsroom journalists will follow.
The US is still substantially richer than the UK, France, and Germany under this metric, so your point stands, but using a better metric would avoid people pointing out that the numbers you cite don't necessarily imply what you claim (e.g. Ireland's per capita GDP is almost double that of the US, but the the median Irish person is about as wealthy as the median French person and substantially poorer than the median American -- Ireland and France both have a per capita PPP that is about 2/3 that of the US).
Thanks, yes - a fair point. (To explain: I was trying to illustrate relative richness, and these relative proportions are pretty accurate no matter which measure you use; the US is still substantially richer than most of its peer countries. I don't think that makes the US better, because the US has a lot of social problems other countries don't, and some measures that clearly matter a lot -- like life expectancy -- are areas where the US does *way* worse than most of its counterparts).
What's interesting is that often in life, people's subjective experience distorts or at the very least is overly influential in their view of objective reality. So, if something is happening to them or people they interact with, they believe that is happening at scale. To use the economy as an example, this would normally result in the majority of people (61% in Michigan who said they were in excellent or good financial shape) overestimating the health of the economy, and a minority underestimating. As Brian pointed out, it is inverted. The fact that there is a disconnect from their subjective experience shows:
1. The effectiveness of the Right Wing Media Echo Chamber's disinformation campaign to reverse what is usually a very difficult psychological phenomenon to reverse (subjectivity bias).....(as well as the Main Stream Media's failure to not both sides it)
...and....
2. That people's perception of reality doesn't influence/drive their political ideology/tribalism......instead their political tribalism influences/drives their perception of reality.
In 2020, I wrote about the "demand and supply" model of political news consumption:
This “captured audience” literally believes that all of FOX’s competitors’ “products” would harm them, and that only FOX’s “product” is safe for consumption,….even while Fox itself is often “polluting”, and in some cases “poisoning” its product/consumers. Imagine if Coke lied and claimed that Pepsi was unsafe for consumption, while simultaneously adding ingredients that not only harmed its consumers, but that actually caused addiction (indoctrination) in those consumers? This is essentially the strategy that Fox has employed.
Furthermore, market forces have pushed Fox’s already “aggressive” business model in an even more extreme direction because the “demand and supply” pressures of Right wing consumers have basically put Fox in a position of either supplying those consumers with what they want,....or risk losing them to even farther Right, more extreme, “news” organizations (Breitbart/Infowars) that use guerrilla tactics to make a name for themselves, and who continually put pressure on FOX to not be outflanked by the extremely aggressive tone/angle of the content. This results in a self-reinforcing dynamic where Right wing media consumers increasingly demand biased, aggressive content...which is happily supplied by media outlets/personalities who scare consumers with threats about the dangers of listening to alternate sources of news….which exacerbates the consumers’ bias, whets their appetite for “aggressive” content…..and repeat.
This self-reinforcing dynamic not only has the effect of perpetuating ignorance (having “zero” knowledge of a topic),…….but by DISinforming people it literally creates a “less-than-zero” effect because people’s opinions are being manipulated in a way that, if starting at “zero” (no knowledge), disinformation campaigns actually push people in the opposite direction from the truth. I pointed this out in a thread/article about disinformation where research showed found that people who watched FOX News exclusively were not only less informed (able to answer less questions correctly) about both domestic and international events than people who watched other sources of news…..but Fox News viewers actually KNEW LESS about domestic/international events THAN PEOPLE WHO DIDN'T WATCH ANY NEWS.
Despite my dislike of his personal pro-Mussolini politics, H.L. Mencken was absolutely right when he observed that "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the average American."
Winston Churchill was also right when he (allegedly) observed, on the occasion of the U.S. declaring war on Japan and thereby entering the Second World War, that "Americans always do the right thing, after trying everything else, first."
And the anonymous source of this quote was also right: "War is the way Americans learn geography."
So far as the views of 40% of today's electorate are concerned, I am sure they are all found on the left side of the bell curve measuring intelligence. The only thing "exceptional" about America is the exceptional moron ignorance that has been present since the first ship bumped into North America.
I am sorry about your head. Speaking of mental schemas, I just read an oped in the NY Times (where else!) that, to me, offers one plausible explanation for Trump's resilience, namely the Halo effect (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/23/opinion/trump-oprah-polls.html). This is the nearly universal tendency in human beings to judge a book by its cover (yes, including us the so-called rational ones). Trump is viewed as a successful businessman, so people assume that he must be good with the economy. And then they filter facts through that lense or ignore them (another common mental schema). There is also the reverse Halo effect. In Canada, for example, people widely believe that our national socialist party (NDP) has ruined public finances every time it held power (at provincial level) even though the exact opposite repeatedly happened. In fact, the traditional parties like the Conservatives and the Liberals have generally done worse in that respect than the NDP, yet the Conservatives especially are given a pass on that because they are perceived as business-oriented people. This is not something that the media can change in the short- and even long term.
There are other social-psychological factors to consider. A big one is fear of loss of status (triggered by demographic and social changes) and the related feeling of being disrespected (telling people they are misinformed will exacerbate that). Another one is the fear of being socially isolated. I was struck by this quote from the Netflix show Ozark by a villainous character when he is told that he might be perceived as a dictator: "people are not afraid of dictators, they are afraid of being different than their neighbours". Again, these are tendencies as old as time and the media is not going to change that in the short term.
So I am not confident that changing the editorial policies of media outlets like the NY Times will make a difference with the swing voters who will decide the election. I am not sure what can be done over the short term. As you say, at this point, the result is a coin toss. We may get lucky. But this is way too close for comfort. Over the long term, it would be good in my view if progressives thought again about treating people as blank slates.
Your excellent article , and the facts and stats included subliminally suggest that the above is the wrong question. The right question's a two-parter: What are we feeling? And why?
The stats indicate the economy's doing well, and Biden's doing a good job. But that's only Reality.
If people in Michigan think the economy's bad, but think they personally are doing well, but also think many others things are also wrong, but can't exactly think of why or how....they're feeling, not thinking.
Okay, Feelings are valid. But not equivalent to Reality.
Democracy is simply terrible ( see Churchill above, and Karl Popper): it's slow, clumsy, hard to operate-- just overall ungainly. And the best thing we have.
It counts on a reasonably informed demos, using critical thinking...when the demos become dummies, you have dumbocracy.
Critical thinking is an enemy of Autocracy; Feeling is it's reliable best friend. Brian, any feelings for an article on the Ascendency of Feeling? How'd we get here?
For what it's worth, I after many clicks found the chat bot for Substack suggestions and suggested that we be able to limit searches to the substacks we subscribe to, so that we can FIND the excellent articles like this and USE them in comments on MSM sites and letters to the editor should the occasion come up in a few weeks. I can't even search my saved posts to find out who said what when.
And the bot actually said it was a useful suggestion and said why (!)--some AIs can actually HEAR you. (I know it was AI because it presented me with a full paragraph immediately after I made it. NO ONE can type that fast. )
I hope they implement it, because it would give us a powerful tool to get The Word as well as the Vote out. Just think what would happen if the NYT put out a gloom and doom report sometime next month and every one of your subscribers shot off this post to the editors.
Once again we’re in the land of Dunning-Kruger America, where those ignorant of facts are yet sure of their answers to factual questions like, “Stock market, up or down?” The question is, what percentage of those people are like D-K’s students who could learn and improve, and what percentage are ideologically opposed to believing that anything Biden does can be good? To find out, we need our media and Democrats to engage in a campaign of education, not just on the economy but on reproductive rights, voting rights, immigration and [least likely to happen] the Second Amendment. Instead we get David Leonard in today’s NYT going, “border crisis: Biden made it worse and yeah, Republicans fucked the bipartisan deal for partisan reasons but he should have done it sooner!”
I always enjoy your writing but I’m not convinced by the argument that the media just needs to say what Donald Trump thinks more often and louder. Last election cycle and 2016 we got criticised for giving him *too much attention*. So which is it that’s the problem?
I think it has shifted — in 2016 the problem was amplifying someone who was a fringe candidate to begin with, giving him $2 billion of free media that was not extended to other candidates. The press made him mainstream. Now, he’s mainstream, but lots of voters aren’t being exposed to all of the crazy, authoritarian stuff he’s saying (which is much crazier than stuff he said as president but is covered much less; see my essay on the “banality of crazy”). Left wing people in the US made the mistake of carrying the “don’t amplify him!” argument past the point where amplification was no longer the problem and that was a serious blunder. The idea that the “unified Reich” video or calling to execute Mark Milley gets less ink than comparatively banal tweets from 2017 shows the problem. But since political dynamics shift over time, so too do the critiques; they’re not mutually exclusive. I think the media, as a whole, has taken the wrong tack both times.
I would suggest the type of attention was different than what is being asked for here. It was “look at how absurd he is, you can’t take him seriously”.
I do agree with some of that, but when you look, the NYT/WashPo/Atlantic pretty diligently cover his excesses. It's just no one cares, really (or rather his base doesn't). I know we covered the Unified Reich post, and we did a very long profile of Mark Milley last September. In fact, I doubt there's a major Trump outrage the Atlantic *didn't cover*.
Too often, I think blaming the media is a way of avoiding the fact that people like bad stuff, and the media responds to what people like.
I don't mean to argue that the media doesn't get stuff wrong btw --- I think you're both right that the "joke candidate" stuff was awful (and maybe I was guilty of it).
The piece I wrote about Trump floating the idea of executing Milley (for the Atlantic) was partly a catalyst in getting the issue covered. When I wrote it — 3 days after he floated the idea of executing Milley in his speech - the NYT and WaPo hadn’t covered it. Zilch! I spoke about the piece on Morning Joe, which (perhaps?) helped amplify it. Then, the Washington Post did cover it, they did so on p. 14, I believe. See for example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2023/10/05/trump-violent-shoplifters-milley-media/ The big profile about Milley in the Atlantic before my piece was part of the reason Trump lashed out but it wasn’t about Trump’s call to execute him…until I wrote anything about Trump calling to execute him, the Atlantic hadn’t covered it either. And there were more stories about Commander Biden biting someone than Trump calling to execute Milley in that news cycle. I checked that via Google News search results.
I’m not saying this is a panacea…but I 100% believe that the press is no longer blaring headlines when Trump does stuff that would, at any other period in modern American history, dominate coverage for weeks if not months. Most Americans don’t know Trump wants to shoot shoplifters or that he floated the idea of executing the top general. That’s nuts. And everyone *does* know about the Charlottesville comments. Why the difference? I think it’s to do with the “banality of crazy” dynamics I outlined previously and how the press doesn’t cover Trump the way they would cover anyone else saying what he says or does.
That’s really interesting, and I defer to your research on this one. But I stand by my broader point… as you say, even when the liberal media covers Trump with due prominence, nothing changes. And that’s because his party has fallen in line: he’s the nominee, they want jobs and patronage.
The US is not exceptional in its populist rage sentiment
"..it’s a mistake to analyze our presidential election in America-only terms."
"Reach out to the doubting elements of his supporters. Don’t question the character of his backers or condescend; appeal to their interests and positive dreams."
The fact is the MAGA crowd cannot elect Trump. Only the swing voters can do that (and with double the efficiency of trying to get left wing people to vote). And you are not going to scare them about the fall of democracy or climate change or structural racism. They have other priorities and values.
I think the thing to do about the problem you correctly identify is buried a long way down the piece, in your second footnote - the way out of this mess has to do with respect and good faith. They're as hard to pin down and quantify as truth and objectivity (a truism rebranded by post-structuralist thought and its modern offspring as an insight, and which has helped undermine MSM in the first place). But respect and good faith actually govern the likelihood that truth and objectivity will be acted upon (if they can ever be found and demonstrated).
I spent 20 years in journalism, a lot of it as a bureau chief at the BBC, and I spent much of those 20 years wondering why people weren't listening - even when the things I was reporting on were momentous in scale and dangerous in import. And I came to understand that respecting your audience was a big part of the solution: don't treat them like morons, or in need of re-education; and find a way of telling the story that resonates by addressing small town, or even small family, concerns when you're trying to recount big matters and world events.
A lot of political discourse trades not in stories that seem personally relevant (and so encourage attention and may change behaviours) but in dry concepts and implicit threat, which can be patronising or anxiety-inducing, and in neither case encourage the reader/viewer to do much more than click away in anger.
The result sets a tone. And the tone is 'laggy'. If you go to a favourite restaurant and you are poorly served, you may know it was a one-off mishap, but you may not go back for a long time. The owner might repaint the place, hire better staff and improve the food, but you still may not go back. I feel the same is true of many media outlets. They lost the audience by a tone that was hectoring or patronising, and often both. It's certainly true of BBC News, of which to my mind little is left but the brand abbreviation.
When that happens, you can mine all the facts you want, and present them as digestibly as you wish, but the audience has left the room. They will have gone to recherché outlets that may be run by spivs and grifters, but offer the illusion that the publication cares about an audience that has been left marooned and sometimes disliked by the media they used to spend loyal money on without thinking about it. People have not got stupider, or more easy to gull. They simply wish to be heard. The audience wants to be listened to as well. Mainstream media, so busy trying to tell them something, loses sight of this basic fact.
As for good faith, it has been radically undermined by the way mainstream media, including BBC News, but also the august literal publications of the States, appear to a large chunk of their decimated audience to have swallowed the post-structuralist inheritance wholesale. A politics of division and damnation - telling people that they are on the wrong side of history or should stay in their lanes is alienating (and does little to advance the reasonable causes it purports to champion). People feel this, even if they can't articulate it. They are bemused when the media assumes the role of a priesthood instead of the traditional role of a critical interrogator - the audience's advocate, not their instructor. They feel that some truths are presented as more truthful than others, and that 'my truth' depends on who's talking - it is respected only when your protected characteristics fit the flavour of the day.
For most, it doesn't feel like journalism, which at its best can heal the disunity that social entropy inevitably tends towards in a species that harms itself. The profession used to be quite good at this task. Now it feels more like activism than journalism as most expect it to be conducted.
This is the antithesis of how I was trained to work - leave your opinions at the door and wipe your privilege off your shoes as you enter. The blurring of that distinction has abraded the respect and good faith without which the achievement of truth and objectivity (and much of the mainstream media laughs into its sleeve about such concepts) would be pyrrhic. Democracy doesn't die in darkness. Democracy dies when nobody is listening anymore.
A lot of this is true, especially about how the audience has left the building. But there is also blame to be laid on what is reported and how. One example here is the GDP as a “measure” of how rich “Americans” are. Creating an average GDP number is distorting a reality in which (1) there are more American billionaires than in every other country together and (2) America’s billionaires have many more billions of dollars than even other billionaires. So those billions created worldwide and owned by American billionaires make “us” look rich. We aren’t. We ARE massively unequal and institutionally blocked from getting fair access to even the wealth created in the US itself.
Each of us can do our job to share clear-cut facts, even if we're not journalists working for newspapers.
What you said here — "Trump appointed three justices who all wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade. Subsequently, they did so" — is a very easy thing to share on social media, and I just did so.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:iljscruiowwcxjz2vga3rffg/post/3kt5u2mg2lc2h
It so happens that I blogged a similar sentence yesterday. A couple days ago, Trump made news for saying he'd consider restricting birth control and was about to issue a "very comprehensive" policy; predictably, he changed his mind a few hours later and swore he'd "never" do so. I took that opportunity to remind my readers of Trump's record. It's a huge red flag when he pretends not to know what his own position on birth control is — for one thing, he's had five children with three wives, in addition to deliberately bringing about the end of Roe v. Wade — and there's no reason for anyone to infantilize him. Also, I pulled up the Project 2025 policy document, searched for "contracepti–", and there was the beginning of the Republican plan for it. If we really want to know what Republican policy is, we'd do better to consult Project 2025 than scry Trump's word salad.
We bloggers can also do our part to restate obvious facts, and maybe some newsroom journalists will follow.
Median PPP (https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-income-by-country) would be a better metric to use in your comparison (using the median removes differences due to income inequality and using purchasing power removes differences due to cost of living).
The US is still substantially richer than the UK, France, and Germany under this metric, so your point stands, but using a better metric would avoid people pointing out that the numbers you cite don't necessarily imply what you claim (e.g. Ireland's per capita GDP is almost double that of the US, but the the median Irish person is about as wealthy as the median French person and substantially poorer than the median American -- Ireland and France both have a per capita PPP that is about 2/3 that of the US).
Thanks, yes - a fair point. (To explain: I was trying to illustrate relative richness, and these relative proportions are pretty accurate no matter which measure you use; the US is still substantially richer than most of its peer countries. I don't think that makes the US better, because the US has a lot of social problems other countries don't, and some measures that clearly matter a lot -- like life expectancy -- are areas where the US does *way* worse than most of its counterparts).
What is Canadian GDP? Curious
$54,917 US
Good stuff, definitely passing this one around the friend group.
What's interesting is that often in life, people's subjective experience distorts or at the very least is overly influential in their view of objective reality. So, if something is happening to them or people they interact with, they believe that is happening at scale. To use the economy as an example, this would normally result in the majority of people (61% in Michigan who said they were in excellent or good financial shape) overestimating the health of the economy, and a minority underestimating. As Brian pointed out, it is inverted. The fact that there is a disconnect from their subjective experience shows:
1. The effectiveness of the Right Wing Media Echo Chamber's disinformation campaign to reverse what is usually a very difficult psychological phenomenon to reverse (subjectivity bias).....(as well as the Main Stream Media's failure to not both sides it)
...and....
2. That people's perception of reality doesn't influence/drive their political ideology/tribalism......instead their political tribalism influences/drives their perception of reality.
In 2020, I wrote about the "demand and supply" model of political news consumption:
This “captured audience” literally believes that all of FOX’s competitors’ “products” would harm them, and that only FOX’s “product” is safe for consumption,….even while Fox itself is often “polluting”, and in some cases “poisoning” its product/consumers. Imagine if Coke lied and claimed that Pepsi was unsafe for consumption, while simultaneously adding ingredients that not only harmed its consumers, but that actually caused addiction (indoctrination) in those consumers? This is essentially the strategy that Fox has employed.
Furthermore, market forces have pushed Fox’s already “aggressive” business model in an even more extreme direction because the “demand and supply” pressures of Right wing consumers have basically put Fox in a position of either supplying those consumers with what they want,....or risk losing them to even farther Right, more extreme, “news” organizations (Breitbart/Infowars) that use guerrilla tactics to make a name for themselves, and who continually put pressure on FOX to not be outflanked by the extremely aggressive tone/angle of the content. This results in a self-reinforcing dynamic where Right wing media consumers increasingly demand biased, aggressive content...which is happily supplied by media outlets/personalities who scare consumers with threats about the dangers of listening to alternate sources of news….which exacerbates the consumers’ bias, whets their appetite for “aggressive” content…..and repeat.
This self-reinforcing dynamic not only has the effect of perpetuating ignorance (having “zero” knowledge of a topic),…….but by DISinforming people it literally creates a “less-than-zero” effect because people’s opinions are being manipulated in a way that, if starting at “zero” (no knowledge), disinformation campaigns actually push people in the opposite direction from the truth. I pointed this out in a thread/article about disinformation where research showed found that people who watched FOX News exclusively were not only less informed (able to answer less questions correctly) about both domestic and international events than people who watched other sources of news…..but Fox News viewers actually KNEW LESS about domestic/international events THAN PEOPLE WHO DIDN'T WATCH ANY NEWS.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/33876951
Despite my dislike of his personal pro-Mussolini politics, H.L. Mencken was absolutely right when he observed that "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the average American."
Winston Churchill was also right when he (allegedly) observed, on the occasion of the U.S. declaring war on Japan and thereby entering the Second World War, that "Americans always do the right thing, after trying everything else, first."
And the anonymous source of this quote was also right: "War is the way Americans learn geography."
So far as the views of 40% of today's electorate are concerned, I am sure they are all found on the left side of the bell curve measuring intelligence. The only thing "exceptional" about America is the exceptional moron ignorance that has been present since the first ship bumped into North America.
I am sorry about your head. Speaking of mental schemas, I just read an oped in the NY Times (where else!) that, to me, offers one plausible explanation for Trump's resilience, namely the Halo effect (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/23/opinion/trump-oprah-polls.html). This is the nearly universal tendency in human beings to judge a book by its cover (yes, including us the so-called rational ones). Trump is viewed as a successful businessman, so people assume that he must be good with the economy. And then they filter facts through that lense or ignore them (another common mental schema). There is also the reverse Halo effect. In Canada, for example, people widely believe that our national socialist party (NDP) has ruined public finances every time it held power (at provincial level) even though the exact opposite repeatedly happened. In fact, the traditional parties like the Conservatives and the Liberals have generally done worse in that respect than the NDP, yet the Conservatives especially are given a pass on that because they are perceived as business-oriented people. This is not something that the media can change in the short- and even long term.
There are other social-psychological factors to consider. A big one is fear of loss of status (triggered by demographic and social changes) and the related feeling of being disrespected (telling people they are misinformed will exacerbate that). Another one is the fear of being socially isolated. I was struck by this quote from the Netflix show Ozark by a villainous character when he is told that he might be perceived as a dictator: "people are not afraid of dictators, they are afraid of being different than their neighbours". Again, these are tendencies as old as time and the media is not going to change that in the short term.
So I am not confident that changing the editorial policies of media outlets like the NY Times will make a difference with the swing voters who will decide the election. I am not sure what can be done over the short term. As you say, at this point, the result is a coin toss. We may get lucky. But this is way too close for comfort. Over the long term, it would be good in my view if progressives thought again about treating people as blank slates.
What are we thinking?
Your excellent article , and the facts and stats included subliminally suggest that the above is the wrong question. The right question's a two-parter: What are we feeling? And why?
The stats indicate the economy's doing well, and Biden's doing a good job. But that's only Reality.
If people in Michigan think the economy's bad, but think they personally are doing well, but also think many others things are also wrong, but can't exactly think of why or how....they're feeling, not thinking.
Okay, Feelings are valid. But not equivalent to Reality.
Democracy is simply terrible ( see Churchill above, and Karl Popper): it's slow, clumsy, hard to operate-- just overall ungainly. And the best thing we have.
It counts on a reasonably informed demos, using critical thinking...when the demos become dummies, you have dumbocracy.
Critical thinking is an enemy of Autocracy; Feeling is it's reliable best friend. Brian, any feelings for an article on the Ascendency of Feeling? How'd we get here?
For what it's worth, I after many clicks found the chat bot for Substack suggestions and suggested that we be able to limit searches to the substacks we subscribe to, so that we can FIND the excellent articles like this and USE them in comments on MSM sites and letters to the editor should the occasion come up in a few weeks. I can't even search my saved posts to find out who said what when.
And the bot actually said it was a useful suggestion and said why (!)--some AIs can actually HEAR you. (I know it was AI because it presented me with a full paragraph immediately after I made it. NO ONE can type that fast. )
I hope they implement it, because it would give us a powerful tool to get The Word as well as the Vote out. Just think what would happen if the NYT put out a gloom and doom report sometime next month and every one of your subscribers shot off this post to the editors.
Once again we’re in the land of Dunning-Kruger America, where those ignorant of facts are yet sure of their answers to factual questions like, “Stock market, up or down?” The question is, what percentage of those people are like D-K’s students who could learn and improve, and what percentage are ideologically opposed to believing that anything Biden does can be good? To find out, we need our media and Democrats to engage in a campaign of education, not just on the economy but on reproductive rights, voting rights, immigration and [least likely to happen] the Second Amendment. Instead we get David Leonard in today’s NYT going, “border crisis: Biden made it worse and yeah, Republicans fucked the bipartisan deal for partisan reasons but he should have done it sooner!”
I always enjoy your writing but I’m not convinced by the argument that the media just needs to say what Donald Trump thinks more often and louder. Last election cycle and 2016 we got criticised for giving him *too much attention*. So which is it that’s the problem?
I think it has shifted — in 2016 the problem was amplifying someone who was a fringe candidate to begin with, giving him $2 billion of free media that was not extended to other candidates. The press made him mainstream. Now, he’s mainstream, but lots of voters aren’t being exposed to all of the crazy, authoritarian stuff he’s saying (which is much crazier than stuff he said as president but is covered much less; see my essay on the “banality of crazy”). Left wing people in the US made the mistake of carrying the “don’t amplify him!” argument past the point where amplification was no longer the problem and that was a serious blunder. The idea that the “unified Reich” video or calling to execute Mark Milley gets less ink than comparatively banal tweets from 2017 shows the problem. But since political dynamics shift over time, so too do the critiques; they’re not mutually exclusive. I think the media, as a whole, has taken the wrong tack both times.
I would suggest the type of attention was different than what is being asked for here. It was “look at how absurd he is, you can’t take him seriously”.
I do agree with some of that, but when you look, the NYT/WashPo/Atlantic pretty diligently cover his excesses. It's just no one cares, really (or rather his base doesn't). I know we covered the Unified Reich post, and we did a very long profile of Mark Milley last September. In fact, I doubt there's a major Trump outrage the Atlantic *didn't cover*.
Too often, I think blaming the media is a way of avoiding the fact that people like bad stuff, and the media responds to what people like.
I don't mean to argue that the media doesn't get stuff wrong btw --- I think you're both right that the "joke candidate" stuff was awful (and maybe I was guilty of it).
The piece I wrote about Trump floating the idea of executing Milley (for the Atlantic) was partly a catalyst in getting the issue covered. When I wrote it — 3 days after he floated the idea of executing Milley in his speech - the NYT and WaPo hadn’t covered it. Zilch! I spoke about the piece on Morning Joe, which (perhaps?) helped amplify it. Then, the Washington Post did cover it, they did so on p. 14, I believe. See for example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2023/10/05/trump-violent-shoplifters-milley-media/ The big profile about Milley in the Atlantic before my piece was part of the reason Trump lashed out but it wasn’t about Trump’s call to execute him…until I wrote anything about Trump calling to execute him, the Atlantic hadn’t covered it either. And there were more stories about Commander Biden biting someone than Trump calling to execute Milley in that news cycle. I checked that via Google News search results.
I’m not saying this is a panacea…but I 100% believe that the press is no longer blaring headlines when Trump does stuff that would, at any other period in modern American history, dominate coverage for weeks if not months. Most Americans don’t know Trump wants to shoot shoplifters or that he floated the idea of executing the top general. That’s nuts. And everyone *does* know about the Charlottesville comments. Why the difference? I think it’s to do with the “banality of crazy” dynamics I outlined previously and how the press doesn’t cover Trump the way they would cover anyone else saying what he says or does.
That’s really interesting, and I defer to your research on this one. But I stand by my broader point… as you say, even when the liberal media covers Trump with due prominence, nothing changes. And that’s because his party has fallen in line: he’s the nominee, they want jobs and patronage.
I agree with you Helen. The press is not the most important issue. In fact, blaring Trump's stupidity louder could well backfire. If you are interested in another view on this dynamic, you can read this https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/23/opinion/populism-trump-elections.html
Major points that I agree with:
The US is not exceptional in its populist rage sentiment
"..it’s a mistake to analyze our presidential election in America-only terms."
"Reach out to the doubting elements of his supporters. Don’t question the character of his backers or condescend; appeal to their interests and positive dreams."
The fact is the MAGA crowd cannot elect Trump. Only the swing voters can do that (and with double the efficiency of trying to get left wing people to vote). And you are not going to scare them about the fall of democracy or climate change or structural racism. They have other priorities and values.
There is also the Halo effect which helps Trump https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/23/opinion/trump-oprah-polls.html?searchResultPosition=1
Lots of hypotheses out there.
I suspect greater than 17% blame Joe Biden for rainy days and the Sun setting in the west!
I think the thing to do about the problem you correctly identify is buried a long way down the piece, in your second footnote - the way out of this mess has to do with respect and good faith. They're as hard to pin down and quantify as truth and objectivity (a truism rebranded by post-structuralist thought and its modern offspring as an insight, and which has helped undermine MSM in the first place). But respect and good faith actually govern the likelihood that truth and objectivity will be acted upon (if they can ever be found and demonstrated).
I spent 20 years in journalism, a lot of it as a bureau chief at the BBC, and I spent much of those 20 years wondering why people weren't listening - even when the things I was reporting on were momentous in scale and dangerous in import. And I came to understand that respecting your audience was a big part of the solution: don't treat them like morons, or in need of re-education; and find a way of telling the story that resonates by addressing small town, or even small family, concerns when you're trying to recount big matters and world events.
A lot of political discourse trades not in stories that seem personally relevant (and so encourage attention and may change behaviours) but in dry concepts and implicit threat, which can be patronising or anxiety-inducing, and in neither case encourage the reader/viewer to do much more than click away in anger.
The result sets a tone. And the tone is 'laggy'. If you go to a favourite restaurant and you are poorly served, you may know it was a one-off mishap, but you may not go back for a long time. The owner might repaint the place, hire better staff and improve the food, but you still may not go back. I feel the same is true of many media outlets. They lost the audience by a tone that was hectoring or patronising, and often both. It's certainly true of BBC News, of which to my mind little is left but the brand abbreviation.
When that happens, you can mine all the facts you want, and present them as digestibly as you wish, but the audience has left the room. They will have gone to recherché outlets that may be run by spivs and grifters, but offer the illusion that the publication cares about an audience that has been left marooned and sometimes disliked by the media they used to spend loyal money on without thinking about it. People have not got stupider, or more easy to gull. They simply wish to be heard. The audience wants to be listened to as well. Mainstream media, so busy trying to tell them something, loses sight of this basic fact.
As for good faith, it has been radically undermined by the way mainstream media, including BBC News, but also the august literal publications of the States, appear to a large chunk of their decimated audience to have swallowed the post-structuralist inheritance wholesale. A politics of division and damnation - telling people that they are on the wrong side of history or should stay in their lanes is alienating (and does little to advance the reasonable causes it purports to champion). People feel this, even if they can't articulate it. They are bemused when the media assumes the role of a priesthood instead of the traditional role of a critical interrogator - the audience's advocate, not their instructor. They feel that some truths are presented as more truthful than others, and that 'my truth' depends on who's talking - it is respected only when your protected characteristics fit the flavour of the day.
For most, it doesn't feel like journalism, which at its best can heal the disunity that social entropy inevitably tends towards in a species that harms itself. The profession used to be quite good at this task. Now it feels more like activism than journalism as most expect it to be conducted.
This is the antithesis of how I was trained to work - leave your opinions at the door and wipe your privilege off your shoes as you enter. The blurring of that distinction has abraded the respect and good faith without which the achievement of truth and objectivity (and much of the mainstream media laughs into its sleeve about such concepts) would be pyrrhic. Democracy doesn't die in darkness. Democracy dies when nobody is listening anymore.
A lot of this is true, especially about how the audience has left the building. But there is also blame to be laid on what is reported and how. One example here is the GDP as a “measure” of how rich “Americans” are. Creating an average GDP number is distorting a reality in which (1) there are more American billionaires than in every other country together and (2) America’s billionaires have many more billions of dollars than even other billionaires. So those billions created worldwide and owned by American billionaires make “us” look rich. We aren’t. We ARE massively unequal and institutionally blocked from getting fair access to even the wealth created in the US itself.