The press did not fail to learn from 2016. It learned what drew eyeballs.
Do reporters want to find themselves flung out of windows after January 20, 2025 under a Trump dictatorship? Seems so, the way they rushed to cover the poisoned special counsel report on “painfully slow,” old Joe Biden’s handling of sensitive materials. His exoneration was buried beneath coverage of a gratuitous, MAGA-reinforcing narrative in the report raising Biden’s age as an issue. The path the press chose, The New Republic subhead reads, “suggests we’re stuck in 2016 again.”
We know what Trump thinks of the media. We know he admires how Vladimir Putin and other world strong men control theirs. He dreams of ruling with an “iron fist,” like the Chinese president. We know what sort of second term he has in mind. A dictatorship, more or less, with himself unfettered by law to do as he pleases. Including to whom he pleases.
So, does the American media have a death wish? Apparently, but reporters will be making the owners money all the way to the sidewalk. Greg Sargent considers the media’s slant a poor choice:
Biden’s age is a real issue, and no one denies this. But the real rub here is that news analysis pieces elevating the material about his age did so by editorial choice. Other, better editorial choices were available.
But who gets to say what’s “better”? The bean-counters, that’s who.
Media critic Dan Froomkin tweets, “There are way more important questions the political press corps should be obsessing over than how Biden presents himself, namely: How is Biden governing? How would Trump govern? And which man is more dangerous?”
Again, who decides what questions are more important? The bean-counters, ultimately. They decided it was time for Sargent to leave the Washington Post, after all.
I doubt either Sargent or Froomkin were ever major stockholders in their former newpapers. They provided content, but the bosses held their leashes and the stockholders held theirs. And what Midas cult cares about are dividends, not the pursuit of truth or public service.
Sargent explores other (better) ways the media might have handled this report: “flatly factually.”
To be clear, one could choose news analysis topics that are highly unflattering to Biden while also being more informative to voters than age-focused analyses have been. A piece questioning how Biden could commit such missteps given his long experience in national security affairs would be fair game—damning and also more useful to voters deciding on who the next president should be.
It might better serve the new-consuming public, but would it generate more clicks, attract more media hits, raise ratings, sell more papers? News is not a service. It’s a business. Profitability trumps all else.
Sargent concludes:
All of this is a rerun of the Hillary emails fiasco in 2016: The new information that Republicans seized on was of uncertain importance, yet editorial decisions were made to give it outsize significance precisely because GOP attacks over it might impact the race, which itself became the news.
As Brian Beutler writes on Substack, Democrats should ponder why Republicans often use such details to manipulate the discourse so effectively, and think harder about how to showcase Biden’s fitness for the presidency. They should declare forthrightly that media coverage is being gamed by GOP manipulation, making GOP dishonesty part of the story. Imagine if they’d jumped on the Hur report’s contrast between Biden and Trump, directing the media herd in that direction?
Fortunately, this blowup occurred eight months before Election Day, as opposed to much later in the campaign season, as in 2016. But Democrats have been warned: This will happen again, and again, and again. As for the media, many still angrily reject the idea that anything was amiss in 2016. They’re wrong. And this time they should do better.
Don’t bet money on it.
Adam Nagourney writes:
It is still early, and Biden has time to turn this page of his campaign, and 2024 is different from 2016. Yet, if he is ultimately unsuccessful in his bid for a second term, “But his age” may serve as his campaign’s epitaph — fairly or not.
And it may. Other media feeding frenzies will follow. They won’t replicate 2016, but they’ll rhyme. Why? Because Trump is good for business in the attention economy. He drew eyeballs. Biden is competent, effective, and that’s boring.
After a second Trump inaugural, reporters had best truthfully exaggerate the size of his crowd or face the wrath of the resurgent MAGA mob. Reporters will breathlessly report on goons (Trump’s or others’) hauling away dissenters up until it’s time for their defenestration. They’ll have just enough time to ask “Why me?” before impacting the pavement.
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.