The rise of Donald Trump’s MAGA movement and its QAnon cousin has left a lot of mainstream journalism as unprepared to cope as we all were the night in 2016 when Trump won the presidency. Deferrence to the office, if not to the man, meant even in his exile the press is both-sidesing if not normalizing the GOP’s public rejection of democracy and remaining neutral in the fight to preserve the republic from rising authoritarianism.
Eric Boehlert writes at PressRun:
Republicans want to make it harder for people to vote and easier for the GOP to invalidate election results. That’s the distressing, historic truth as the party fully embraces an anti-democratic agenda.
Hiding behind Both Sides journalism, which portrays all political skirmishes as being the product of each party, the D.C. press continues to struggle to be honest about the GOP’s radical turn. Recently the New York Times, as if trying to create a Both Sides archetype, including flawless examples of everything that’s wrong and dangerous about the faulty form of journalism, published a painfully bad piece about GOP voter suppression. “Museum quality,” was how New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen dubbed the Times’ pitch-perfect Both Sides entry.
Strictly adhering to the he said/she said construct that the Times newsroom finds so comforting, the article made no effort to reach a logical conclusion in terms of which side in the voting ‘debate’ was being honest and accurate. Functioning as a clearing house for the Democratic and Republican quotes that were collected, the Times saw its job not as illuminating news consumers about a gravely important topic, but to simple type up competing quotes.
After reading the piece, former Seattle Times editor Mike Fancher tweeted it was, “an example of journalism that is accurate but not truthful. It is also harmful to democracy.” Addressing the Times’ executive editor he added, “Please, @deanbaquet, hire a public editor to help your newsroom become stewards of democracy.”
“In Congress, Republicans Shrug at Warnings of Democracy in Peril,” reads the headline of the offending article. Republicans shrugged at torches and “Jews will not replace us.” They shrug at majority rule if they cannot control the outcome or overturn it after the vote-counting.
At this point, Republicans as an organization are only going through the motions of particpating in democracy. The press should state plainly what is obvious to the rest of us.