The shutdown deal didn’t just collapse under political pressure. It wilted in an information ecosystem designed to underplay the stakes. Mark Jacob’s point lands hard here: the press, afraid to "hit the total button," treated this as another partisan squabble rather than a test of whether Democrats could hold the line against Trump’s accelerating authoritarianism. The media’s default mode, calm, balanced, and incremental, doesn’t just misinform, but disarms.
If more coverage framed this moment as part of a larger authoritarian pattern, if more headlines said plainly that the GOP is holding the government and healthcare hostage, maybe Democratic senators would feel more cover to resist. Instead, the system rewards de-escalation and penalizes confrontation, especially when it comes from the left.
That’s the link: Democratic leaders fear being labeled the extremists because the media treats the collapse of norms as yesterday’s news. And so, a manufactured crisis becomes just another day in Washington, and a chance to resist slides quietly into history.
I agree. The framing is what really matters. For decades the media has refused to report honestly about our healthcare system. They actually aided and abetted the Republicans’ dishonest attacks on reform repeating many of their lies in a “he said/she said” manner.
Read James’ Fallows Atlantic article “A Triumph of Misinformation” which describes how the Clinton health reform was defeated with lies. Back then there had been strong bipartisan agreement that our system was broken. Then (now Never Trump) Bill Kristol sent out a memo advising Rs to deny Clinton any win on healthcare so they could win the midterms. Senate leader Bob Dole — that man the media tells us was highly principled — did a fast 180 and declared our system was not broken and did not need to be fixed. Suddenly no one was going bankrupt from health care costs, no one was being denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions, etc. The mainstream “liberal” media played along repeating irrelevant complaints about the length of the bill, the process used to put it together, etc. They were particularly outraged that when Hillary went around the country meeting with healthcare providers she did not invite the media because she wanted their candid feedback. In fact my best friend’s husband, a radiologist at a hospital in rural Wisconsin, had been very leery of reform was gobsmacked that Hillary and her team actually visited them. He was extremely impressed by how receptive she was to their issues, etc.
This disaster happened before Fox News had gotten off the ground so don’t let anyone try to tell you the killing of our democracy is the fault of right wing media.
“The media's desire to sedate its audience is evidenced by NBC News' new slogan: "Facts. Clarity. Calm." This is not the time to be calm. This is the time to be scared enough to defend our democracy.”
The problem is that the mainstream media are up to their necks and sinking deeper into the quicksand of ownership by corporations with other, substantially larger, financial holdings. The reason why the media are complicit in our precipitous drop into dictatorship is built into their economic infrastructures.
The recent debacle at CBS - caused by the $8billion merger of Skydance Media with Paramount Global - is but one such example.
This started well before corporate ownership. The media put Reagan on a pedestal and never bothered to inform people that his tax cuts that were supposed to pay for themselves helped Reagan triple the national debt. The media also accepted Reagan’s “apology” for Iran Contra — you know, him saying that although the facts tell him he did break the law by trading arms for hostages his heart and best intentions still told him he hadn’t. They also let Poppy Bush get away with repeatedly lying by claiming he had been out of the loop on Iran Contra when he had actually been up to his neck in it, had withheld daming evidence (his diary) from prosecutors and then pardoned all of his co-conspirators so that info would not come out at their trials. The Independent Counsel. Lawrence Walsh, was so furious he openly accused Bush of “completing the coverup”. This was a massive violation of our Constitution and their oaths of office yet the media was far more irate over Clinton breaking his marriage vows than they were Reagan and Bush getting off the hook after all their lies.
This was the mainstream media back when both the NYT and WaPo were family owned (NYT still is) and the networks were not in the control of non-news corporations.
Back then the major political journalists. pundits, politicians and other powerful people were all part of the same social circle and they all hung out at Sally Quinn’s (Ben Bradlee’s wife) soirées. David Ignatius wrote that he and his wife were so thrilled to get their first invite because Sally and Ben were their circle’s “Bogie and Bacall”. If you were accepted by their inner circle, especially by Ms Quinn, you could get away with a lot. If she saw you as a rube from Arkansas or his wife then you were a target for their snotty outrage. This was not about corporate control back then but the damage to our democracy was still deep and lasting. They even defended Ken Starr because he was a Villager.
From what I can gather the Villagers are still a thing but they hang out at Maureen Dowd’s but Quinn is still around too.
This is the money clause, Mark, re mainstream American journalists: "There’s no learning curve." In a decade of covering Rump (and all the con artists and deceivers in his sphere), mainstream reporters still do not know how to confront the never-ending lies, evasions and dissemblings. They just let the liars lie. Few journos ever push back, and they don't band together to press a question. Being obsequious, they think, will preserve their "access"? Access to what? The mendacious gish gallop that passes these days for a white house press conference? Lyin' Karoline Leavitt should fear the press; instead, she stands calmly at the podium and dispenses falsities, fairy takes and outright bullsh*t, which the assembled politely receive. To the members of the Fourth Estate: We need you. Wake the f*ck up!
As we said in the '70s, Mark, you're damned straight the media are easing us into tyranny, as you so aptly put it. Mindboggling complacency (complicity?) when people yearn for the truth is a death sentence for democracy.
The mainstream media has made itself irrelevant. The only people watching news networks or reading newspapers are people over 60. The media decided long ago to be partisan to appeal to people who agree with them. Fox, News max, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post, NY Post etc are all just companies that sell advertising.
The mainstream media has a lot more influence over what people hear about the news than we realize. I have seen several studies (one by Harvard’s Berkman Klein center) that traced the source for posts on social media. They found that the mainstream media, especially the NYT, WaPo and CNN are the source a lot of the news coverage that people see on social media.
Then there are this from Pew Research:
More than two-thirds of Americans – 68 percent – say that broadcast network news (ABC, NBC or CBS) is either a major or minor source of their political news.
That includes 54 percent of Republicans and those who lean Republican.
Just over half – 53 percent – of Americans get some or much of their news from CNN. And that includes 35 percent of Republicans.
Almost one in four Republicans – 24 percent – say they get some or much of their news from the New York Times.
I strongly urge you to read that entire post. It explains why so many voters who swung to Trump told pollsters that while they and their regions were doing fine financially they believed the national economy was terrible. In fact it was the strongest economy of all the Western countries by far with comparable to them. Right before the election The Economist, hardly a liberal rag had a cover story proclaiming the US economy was so strong it was leaving other rich countries “in its dust”. At the time I was livid that most of our mainstream “liberal” media ignored those facts. (The exception was MSNBC’s Morning Joe regular segments with Steve Rattner that gave clear facts about the strength of our economy.) The NYT and WaPo buried or ignored stories about the strength of our economy but put placed stories about the price of eggs on their front pages. As inflation eased to normal levels without that deep recession Larry Summers had predicted, the media downplayed those facts and focused on vibes. When Biden and later Harris tried to talk about the economy the media responded with their usual “Democrats don’t care about the pain of ordinary Americans” the same people who were benefitting the most from Biden’s policies.
And then there were the outright lies, as Dean Baker documented here:
“ Yes, the Media Lied About the Pre-Election Economy”
The Pew stats do not include age. The reason all new outlets are losing customers is that the younger the person the less likely to watch new stations and read newspapers. Neither seems to know how to reverse that trend.
Newspaper reading
Median age: The median age of regular newspaper readers in the U.S. is around 55.
Older demographics: A significant portion of newspaper subscribers are over 55, with one survey showing that 50% of subscribers fall into this age bracket.
Frequency: The older an age group, the more likely they are to read newspapers, with those aged 65 and older reading them most frequently.
Television news watching
Median age: The median age of regular TV news viewers is approximately 67 years old.
Older demographics: Viewers aged 65 and older are more likely to watch TV news daily than younger adults.
Cable vs. broadcast: Cable news audiences tend to be older than broadcast audiences, with median ages around 70 for networks like MSNBC and 69 for Fox News, while the median age for CBS and ABC is about 64 and 66, respectively.
The Berkman Klein study (which I can’t find anymore) looked at people who got their news from social media and that included a lot of young people. What they found was the source of those stories was overwhelmingly the mainstream media with the NYT and WaPo being the source of most for people not in the right wing bubble. Fox News was a big source too but didn’t account for as many posts. The mainstream media was still influencing younger voters but they weren’t making money off it.
Richard D, If only your vision comes true, BUT there is no time!! The Democratic Party has FAILED AGAIN to deliver for our Nation!!! They are spineless, as is legacy media, and have capitulated, once again, to this monstrous administration.
We must stop the sycophantic GOP before it’s too late… we’re getting close to the point of no-return-to-normal!! We have to take a solid stand! Contact your Congressional members and demand that they FIGHT TYRANNY! NOW!
Thanks. Frankly I don't see how anyone can support the Democrats. For instance, Gov. (and former VP candidate) Tim Walz signed into law legislation denying health care to the undocumented.
The GOP was always rotten, but at least they're not hypocrites. Our Democrats are rotten, AND hypocrites.
So what do you propose? Voting for a 3d party candidate like so may did in 2000 that it cost Gore the state of Florida? He lost by less than 600 votes — Nader got over 97,000 in just that one state. We paid a huge price for that not only in terms of wars but also in putting us far behind in dealing with global warming than where we would have with Gore.
That is how all those Nader voters justified not voting for Gore. As a result of their purist vote hundreds of thousands of people were killed in Bush’s and Cheney’s wars and our democracy was badly damaged. It also gave us Alito and Roberts. To me that is not even close to justifiable. I have watched Democrats fight for health care coverage since the nineties and may of them lost their seats as a result. The reforms may not be what many people want but they were/are far better than what we had.
I vote based on what I think is the best for our country and many times that candidate was not my idea of perfect.
Somehow I missed your post about grading the media. I am a life long Democrat but I disagree strongly about you saying MSNBC should fire Joe Scarborough. (As for Kasich I never seen him on MSNBC.) MJ is not obsessing over the Dems “caving” but is focused mainly on the disasters of Trump and they/he pulls no punches. He can be annoying but if you watch regularly as I do (convenient time of day for me and they cover a lot of insider Congress info)
But the best part of the show is the regularly in depth, understandable coverage of our economy in the segments with Steve Rattner. Morning Joe regularly reported the amazing strength of the US economy under Biden, something almost no one else in the mainstream media was doing because they were freaking out about the price of eggs. Since Trump took office they have continued that coverage, showing all the damage Trump has been doing. The murdering of people on fishing boats has also been discussed with appropriate outrage. When Trump blew up the East Wing they all went ballistic. They have all been mercilessly mocking his gold-plating of the White House and his remodel of the Lincoln bathroom.
I am willing to put up with Joe’s sometimes annoying bombast (especially when he brags about his time in Congress) just for the economic coverage. From what I can gather Trump still watches sometimes too which is an added benefit.
I was a small-time journalist way back in the day. Graduated from Columbia School of Journalism. Worked as a reporter for Knight-Ridder in Duluth and Detroit. Then moved around the country for husband’s career, freelanced, had three kids and did more freelancing and political organizing. In other words—not famous, not important, but I was a true news hound. I read the NYT every day; always listened to NPR in the car and kitchen, etc.
Fast-forward to now: I don’t subscribe to the NYT, WaPost, Atlantic Monthly or New Yorker. I don’t listen to NPR or support public radio—we were diehard public radio supporters and used to give them $1,000 a year.
I get my news mostly from independent journalists on Substack and/or other small outlets or platforms. I spend more money supporting independent writers than I ever did on subscriptions. And the reason is just what you said below: I can't stand to watch the mainstream press pretend that the lying is okay and that everything is sort of normal and that legacy journalists are too smart and too cool to care if MAGA/GOP/Trump wins. (But they are always cool enough to express contempt for progressives and Dems.)
I’m 68, so my discontent with legacy media goes way back. I didn’t like the NYT’s endless ginning up of the Whitewater scandal; its normalization of Bush vs. Gore and so much more. Then sometime in late 2003 or early 2004 , as the Abu Ghraib scandal was brewing, as I was driving around on some errands, I heard Madeline Brand open NPR’s "Day to Day" show by saying, “Torture is evil. Torture wrong. But is it sometimes……necessary? That story and more after the news.” And then the cool, breezy music swelled again.
And something just broke inside me. It was beyond rage. It was this feeling like, nope, I’m just done. I can’t listen to this any more. Listening and supporting this is a moral injury.
I sent an email to the NPR ombudsman saying, what would you think of a German radio station that opened a show in 1942 announcing, “Shooting Jews is evil. Shooting Jew is wrong, but is it sometimes….necessary? That story and more, after the news,” while upbeat music played in the background. You would be rightfully repelled, so what is going on here?
Of course, I never got a response. But I think that moment crystalized my long-brewing sense that this profession that I loved and believed in had taken a very wrong turn.
Anyhow, thank you! Reading your work makes me feel less crazy/alone. I hope it gets more Boomers and younger folks to question the narrative! On the plus side, almost no one I know who is under 40 years old reads ANY mainstream media. On the downside, we are losing the infrastructure that still supports good journalism—although it’s often buried under terrible headlines.
I beg everyone to watch this segment of Lawrence O’Donnell, “Trump shutdown ends, Epstein files return” from Monday night. It not only shows how to frame the compromise on the shutdown and it is also an important explanation of what the role of the Senate Marjority/MInority leader is and gives the history of previous Dem leaders. I follow politics fairly closely yet I had no idea about a lot of these facts or that no one really wants Schumer’s job because they know how incredibly hard it is.
I also had no idea that the Dems who “caved” on the shutdown got some serious concessions, including back pay for all federal workers as well as and INCREASE IN SNAP benefits. If Democrats want to beat MAGA they need to tout their wins and quit their bitchin”, even if it is justified. Keep the spotlight on their wins and on the fact that Republicans are solely responsible for the huge increases in ACA costs that people are just now being notified about. More importantly make sure the media keeps the spotlight on Republicans trying to destroy healthcare.
I really believe if Democrats stop the circular firing squad and keep the focus on the vote that is supposed to happen on the ACA they will prevail on that issue too.
This is one of the smartest things I've read for a very long time, and I read a great deal. Everyone should read it and then read it again, and share it with others.
The shutdown deal didn’t just collapse under political pressure. It wilted in an information ecosystem designed to underplay the stakes. Mark Jacob’s point lands hard here: the press, afraid to "hit the total button," treated this as another partisan squabble rather than a test of whether Democrats could hold the line against Trump’s accelerating authoritarianism. The media’s default mode, calm, balanced, and incremental, doesn’t just misinform, but disarms.
If more coverage framed this moment as part of a larger authoritarian pattern, if more headlines said plainly that the GOP is holding the government and healthcare hostage, maybe Democratic senators would feel more cover to resist. Instead, the system rewards de-escalation and penalizes confrontation, especially when it comes from the left.
That’s the link: Democratic leaders fear being labeled the extremists because the media treats the collapse of norms as yesterday’s news. And so, a manufactured crisis becomes just another day in Washington, and a chance to resist slides quietly into history.
More thoughts: https://www.stewonthis.com/p/moderation-vs-centrism
Well put and exactly right.
I agree. The framing is what really matters. For decades the media has refused to report honestly about our healthcare system. They actually aided and abetted the Republicans’ dishonest attacks on reform repeating many of their lies in a “he said/she said” manner.
Read James’ Fallows Atlantic article “A Triumph of Misinformation” which describes how the Clinton health reform was defeated with lies. Back then there had been strong bipartisan agreement that our system was broken. Then (now Never Trump) Bill Kristol sent out a memo advising Rs to deny Clinton any win on healthcare so they could win the midterms. Senate leader Bob Dole — that man the media tells us was highly principled — did a fast 180 and declared our system was not broken and did not need to be fixed. Suddenly no one was going bankrupt from health care costs, no one was being denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions, etc. The mainstream “liberal” media played along repeating irrelevant complaints about the length of the bill, the process used to put it together, etc. They were particularly outraged that when Hillary went around the country meeting with healthcare providers she did not invite the media because she wanted their candid feedback. In fact my best friend’s husband, a radiologist at a hospital in rural Wisconsin, had been very leery of reform was gobsmacked that Hillary and her team actually visited them. He was extremely impressed by how receptive she was to their issues, etc.
This disaster happened before Fox News had gotten off the ground so don’t let anyone try to tell you the killing of our democracy is the fault of right wing media.
🐸🔥DearMedia-WAKE UP‼️
❣️🇺🇸Excellent-Mark Jacob..
“The media's desire to sedate its audience is evidenced by NBC News' new slogan: "Facts. Clarity. Calm." This is not the time to be calm. This is the time to be scared enough to defend our democracy.”
https://bsky.app/profile/kenaiseasky.bsky.social/post/3m5ccr4fdsk2a
The problem is that the mainstream media are up to their necks and sinking deeper into the quicksand of ownership by corporations with other, substantially larger, financial holdings. The reason why the media are complicit in our precipitous drop into dictatorship is built into their economic infrastructures.
The recent debacle at CBS - caused by the $8billion merger of Skydance Media with Paramount Global - is but one such example.
This started well before corporate ownership. The media put Reagan on a pedestal and never bothered to inform people that his tax cuts that were supposed to pay for themselves helped Reagan triple the national debt. The media also accepted Reagan’s “apology” for Iran Contra — you know, him saying that although the facts tell him he did break the law by trading arms for hostages his heart and best intentions still told him he hadn’t. They also let Poppy Bush get away with repeatedly lying by claiming he had been out of the loop on Iran Contra when he had actually been up to his neck in it, had withheld daming evidence (his diary) from prosecutors and then pardoned all of his co-conspirators so that info would not come out at their trials. The Independent Counsel. Lawrence Walsh, was so furious he openly accused Bush of “completing the coverup”. This was a massive violation of our Constitution and their oaths of office yet the media was far more irate over Clinton breaking his marriage vows than they were Reagan and Bush getting off the hook after all their lies.
This was the mainstream media back when both the NYT and WaPo were family owned (NYT still is) and the networks were not in the control of non-news corporations.
Back then the major political journalists. pundits, politicians and other powerful people were all part of the same social circle and they all hung out at Sally Quinn’s (Ben Bradlee’s wife) soirées. David Ignatius wrote that he and his wife were so thrilled to get their first invite because Sally and Ben were their circle’s “Bogie and Bacall”. If you were accepted by their inner circle, especially by Ms Quinn, you could get away with a lot. If she saw you as a rube from Arkansas or his wife then you were a target for their snotty outrage. This was not about corporate control back then but the damage to our democracy was still deep and lasting. They even defended Ken Starr because he was a Villager.
From what I can gather the Villagers are still a thing but they hang out at Maureen Dowd’s but Quinn is still around too.
https://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/are-you-tired-party-crashers-story-yet
This is the money clause, Mark, re mainstream American journalists: "There’s no learning curve." In a decade of covering Rump (and all the con artists and deceivers in his sphere), mainstream reporters still do not know how to confront the never-ending lies, evasions and dissemblings. They just let the liars lie. Few journos ever push back, and they don't band together to press a question. Being obsequious, they think, will preserve their "access"? Access to what? The mendacious gish gallop that passes these days for a white house press conference? Lyin' Karoline Leavitt should fear the press; instead, she stands calmly at the podium and dispenses falsities, fairy takes and outright bullsh*t, which the assembled politely receive. To the members of the Fourth Estate: We need you. Wake the f*ck up!
As we said in the '70s, Mark, you're damned straight the media are easing us into tyranny, as you so aptly put it. Mindboggling complacency (complicity?) when people yearn for the truth is a death sentence for democracy.
Thanks for writing this.
This piece is 10/10. This line sums up America, and is due to the press’s failure:
Trump has been dropping feces on us for a decade… and now we’re used to it.
The mainstream media has made itself irrelevant. The only people watching news networks or reading newspapers are people over 60. The media decided long ago to be partisan to appeal to people who agree with them. Fox, News max, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post, NY Post etc are all just companies that sell advertising.
The mainstream media has a lot more influence over what people hear about the news than we realize. I have seen several studies (one by Harvard’s Berkman Klein center) that traced the source for posts on social media. They found that the mainstream media, especially the NYT, WaPo and CNN are the source a lot of the news coverage that people see on social media.
Then there are this from Pew Research:
More than two-thirds of Americans – 68 percent – say that broadcast network news (ABC, NBC or CBS) is either a major or minor source of their political news.
That includes 54 percent of Republicans and those who lean Republican.
Just over half – 53 percent – of Americans get some or much of their news from CNN. And that includes 35 percent of Republicans.
Almost one in four Republicans – 24 percent – say they get some or much of their news from the New York Times.
“I Blame the Media”
Dan Froomkin
https://criticalread.substack.com/p/i-blame-the-media
I strongly urge you to read that entire post. It explains why so many voters who swung to Trump told pollsters that while they and their regions were doing fine financially they believed the national economy was terrible. In fact it was the strongest economy of all the Western countries by far with comparable to them. Right before the election The Economist, hardly a liberal rag had a cover story proclaiming the US economy was so strong it was leaving other rich countries “in its dust”. At the time I was livid that most of our mainstream “liberal” media ignored those facts. (The exception was MSNBC’s Morning Joe regular segments with Steve Rattner that gave clear facts about the strength of our economy.) The NYT and WaPo buried or ignored stories about the strength of our economy but put placed stories about the price of eggs on their front pages. As inflation eased to normal levels without that deep recession Larry Summers had predicted, the media downplayed those facts and focused on vibes. When Biden and later Harris tried to talk about the economy the media responded with their usual “Democrats don’t care about the pain of ordinary Americans” the same people who were benefitting the most from Biden’s policies.
And then there were the outright lies, as Dean Baker documented here:
“ Yes, the Media Lied About the Pre-Election Economy”
https://cepr.net/publications/media-lied-about-pre-election-economy/
The Pew stats do not include age. The reason all new outlets are losing customers is that the younger the person the less likely to watch new stations and read newspapers. Neither seems to know how to reverse that trend.
Newspaper reading
Median age: The median age of regular newspaper readers in the U.S. is around 55.
Older demographics: A significant portion of newspaper subscribers are over 55, with one survey showing that 50% of subscribers fall into this age bracket.
Frequency: The older an age group, the more likely they are to read newspapers, with those aged 65 and older reading them most frequently.
Television news watching
Median age: The median age of regular TV news viewers is approximately 67 years old.
Older demographics: Viewers aged 65 and older are more likely to watch TV news daily than younger adults.
Cable vs. broadcast: Cable news audiences tend to be older than broadcast audiences, with median ages around 70 for networks like MSNBC and 69 for Fox News, while the median age for CBS and ABC is about 64 and 66, respectively.
The Berkman Klein study (which I can’t find anymore) looked at people who got their news from social media and that included a lot of young people. What they found was the source of those stories was overwhelmingly the mainstream media with the NYT and WaPo being the source of most for people not in the right wing bubble. Fox News was a big source too but didn’t account for as many posts. The mainstream media was still influencing younger voters but they weren’t making money off it.
Give it time. The Democrats might have the White House next. Then it will be the GOP croaking about "authoritarians".
Richard D, If only your vision comes true, BUT there is no time!! The Democratic Party has FAILED AGAIN to deliver for our Nation!!! They are spineless, as is legacy media, and have capitulated, once again, to this monstrous administration.
We must stop the sycophantic GOP before it’s too late… we’re getting close to the point of no-return-to-normal!! We have to take a solid stand! Contact your Congressional members and demand that they FIGHT TYRANNY! NOW!
Thanks. Frankly I don't see how anyone can support the Democrats. For instance, Gov. (and former VP candidate) Tim Walz signed into law legislation denying health care to the undocumented.
The GOP was always rotten, but at least they're not hypocrites. Our Democrats are rotten, AND hypocrites.
So what do you propose? Voting for a 3d party candidate like so may did in 2000 that it cost Gore the state of Florida? He lost by less than 600 votes — Nader got over 97,000 in just that one state. We paid a huge price for that not only in terms of wars but also in putting us far behind in dealing with global warming than where we would have with Gore.
There comes a time when one must vote their conscience. When it comes to human rights, if neither party stands with you, that time has come.
That is how all those Nader voters justified not voting for Gore. As a result of their purist vote hundreds of thousands of people were killed in Bush’s and Cheney’s wars and our democracy was badly damaged. It also gave us Alito and Roberts. To me that is not even close to justifiable. I have watched Democrats fight for health care coverage since the nineties and may of them lost their seats as a result. The reforms may not be what many people want but they were/are far better than what we had.
I vote based on what I think is the best for our country and many times that candidate was not my idea of perfect.
So you'd vote for a party that denies health care to the undocumented? Then we are just plain different people.
Somehow I missed your post about grading the media. I am a life long Democrat but I disagree strongly about you saying MSNBC should fire Joe Scarborough. (As for Kasich I never seen him on MSNBC.) MJ is not obsessing over the Dems “caving” but is focused mainly on the disasters of Trump and they/he pulls no punches. He can be annoying but if you watch regularly as I do (convenient time of day for me and they cover a lot of insider Congress info)
But the best part of the show is the regularly in depth, understandable coverage of our economy in the segments with Steve Rattner. Morning Joe regularly reported the amazing strength of the US economy under Biden, something almost no one else in the mainstream media was doing because they were freaking out about the price of eggs. Since Trump took office they have continued that coverage, showing all the damage Trump has been doing. The murdering of people on fishing boats has also been discussed with appropriate outrage. When Trump blew up the East Wing they all went ballistic. They have all been mercilessly mocking his gold-plating of the White House and his remodel of the Lincoln bathroom.
I am willing to put up with Joe’s sometimes annoying bombast (especially when he brags about his time in Congress) just for the economic coverage. From what I can gather Trump still watches sometimes too which is an added benefit.
Thank you so much for this.
I was a small-time journalist way back in the day. Graduated from Columbia School of Journalism. Worked as a reporter for Knight-Ridder in Duluth and Detroit. Then moved around the country for husband’s career, freelanced, had three kids and did more freelancing and political organizing. In other words—not famous, not important, but I was a true news hound. I read the NYT every day; always listened to NPR in the car and kitchen, etc.
Fast-forward to now: I don’t subscribe to the NYT, WaPost, Atlantic Monthly or New Yorker. I don’t listen to NPR or support public radio—we were diehard public radio supporters and used to give them $1,000 a year.
I get my news mostly from independent journalists on Substack and/or other small outlets or platforms. I spend more money supporting independent writers than I ever did on subscriptions. And the reason is just what you said below: I can't stand to watch the mainstream press pretend that the lying is okay and that everything is sort of normal and that legacy journalists are too smart and too cool to care if MAGA/GOP/Trump wins. (But they are always cool enough to express contempt for progressives and Dems.)
I’m 68, so my discontent with legacy media goes way back. I didn’t like the NYT’s endless ginning up of the Whitewater scandal; its normalization of Bush vs. Gore and so much more. Then sometime in late 2003 or early 2004 , as the Abu Ghraib scandal was brewing, as I was driving around on some errands, I heard Madeline Brand open NPR’s "Day to Day" show by saying, “Torture is evil. Torture wrong. But is it sometimes……necessary? That story and more after the news.” And then the cool, breezy music swelled again.
And something just broke inside me. It was beyond rage. It was this feeling like, nope, I’m just done. I can’t listen to this any more. Listening and supporting this is a moral injury.
I sent an email to the NPR ombudsman saying, what would you think of a German radio station that opened a show in 1942 announcing, “Shooting Jews is evil. Shooting Jew is wrong, but is it sometimes….necessary? That story and more, after the news,” while upbeat music played in the background. You would be rightfully repelled, so what is going on here?
Of course, I never got a response. But I think that moment crystalized my long-brewing sense that this profession that I loved and believed in had taken a very wrong turn.
Anyhow, thank you! Reading your work makes me feel less crazy/alone. I hope it gets more Boomers and younger folks to question the narrative! On the plus side, almost no one I know who is under 40 years old reads ANY mainstream media. On the downside, we are losing the infrastructure that still supports good journalism—although it’s often buried under terrible headlines.
Impeccable timing, I included a media angle in my latest report: https://open.substack.com/pub/willfries/p/mayor-randy-taylor-bigot-salisbury?r=17md5s&utm_medium=ios
I beg everyone to watch this segment of Lawrence O’Donnell, “Trump shutdown ends, Epstein files return” from Monday night. It not only shows how to frame the compromise on the shutdown and it is also an important explanation of what the role of the Senate Marjority/MInority leader is and gives the history of previous Dem leaders. I follow politics fairly closely yet I had no idea about a lot of these facts or that no one really wants Schumer’s job because they know how incredibly hard it is.
https://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/lawrence-with-trump-s-shutdown-ending-dems-are-closer-than-ever-to-forcing-epstein-files-release-251756613516
I also had no idea that the Dems who “caved” on the shutdown got some serious concessions, including back pay for all federal workers as well as and INCREASE IN SNAP benefits. If Democrats want to beat MAGA they need to tout their wins and quit their bitchin”, even if it is justified. Keep the spotlight on their wins and on the fact that Republicans are solely responsible for the huge increases in ACA costs that people are just now being notified about. More importantly make sure the media keeps the spotlight on Republicans trying to destroy healthcare.
I really believe if Democrats stop the circular firing squad and keep the focus on the vote that is supposed to happen on the ACA they will prevail on that issue too.
But, what can an average person do about it?
This is one of the smartest things I've read for a very long time, and I read a great deal. Everyone should read it and then read it again, and share it with others.