The problem with that is that it’s so fragmented that there isn’t any common source where people are getting their information. Most people don’t even know where to turn for it.
When it comes to political journalists I believe the kind of information they owe the public is the information that can help be informed citizens, to make vote based on substantive information, to be able to form and express our opinions based on the relevant facts, not spin. I believe that is why our Founders gave journalists special protection in the constitution. They didn’t do that to make sure they could entertain us and themselves with trivia and lies.
You’re totally right. They are criminally negligent if you ask me. But I don’t think they’re going to change anytime soon. I’m grateful for substack too.
I have been complaining about how horrible our mainstream media coverage is since the media decided to partner with the right wing Arkansas Project’s effort to take down Bill Clinton with phony scandal after phony scandal. There were multiple investigations of those pseudo-scandals — Whitewater, FIlegate, Travelgate, — conducted by Republicans and costing us taxpayers over $70 million dollars. Nothing was found except an affair despite the fact that Ken Starr had all the resources of the FBI put at his disposal by the Clinton-hating rightwinger Louie Freeh. (The media put Freeh on a pedestal, deeming him a “Boy Scout” when in fact he was constantly breaking DOJ rules by leaking to the media to hurt Clinton who had appointed him.) Then came the WMD lies, the dishonest smears against Gore and Kerry that the media either helped spread or refused to push back against. The media didn’t even get our outraged over the multiple investigations of the insane, vicious slander that the Clintons had murdered one of their closest friends, Vince Foster. They also didn’t try to hold Chicken Hawk Bush accountable for the disgusting Swift Boat Liars attacks on Kerry’s war heroism.
Back then most people didn’t seem to realize just how the media refusal to hold Republicans to account made them complicit with the rise of Republican extremism. Today it seems that has really changed. The outrage over the media’s non-coverage of Trump’s terrifying “you won’t have to vote again” speech and, worse, their white-washing of it’s meaning shows me that people have finally caught on to the media’s unwillingness to hold Republicans to the standards of our democracy . The fact that the NY Times only covered the speech after a barrage of criticism from the public and Dems tells me they are finally feeling intimidated by Democrats the way they have been intimidated by Republicans for decades.
Kamala is massively qualified and as close to pitch perfect as it gets. Trump is a deranged, demented, narcissistic sociopath who will destroy democracy. If the MSM reported the truth, there wouldn't be a race. Where are the ratings and dollars in that?
The thing is, the fact that one of our two major political parties went from being the party of Lincoln to being an openly authoritarian cult of personality that explicitly prefers dictatorships to democracies — a transformation that was decades in the making; it didn’t start in 2015 — is a big story! People would watch it and click on it!
So it’s not just about the ratings. As a former journalist myself, I don’t go in for extended conspiratorial rants about “the media,” but — it’s not just about ratings and clicks.
PS: If they reported the truth, there would still be a race. An overwhelming majority of Trump supporters knows exactly who he is and what he wants, and they want it too. There’s always been an element in this country that acts like an abusive spouse toward it—hates it while protesting to love it more than anyone. And that’s also a huge story that would send ratings through the roof. But they won’t do it.
I keep saying-- they're missing the story of the century! I wish I fully knew why, but what worries me is that it chills public discourse. People are afraid to speak out because they think "The New York Times never mentioned this--it must not be that big a deal."
I would not say she is close to pitch perfect. There are certainly things in her job as a prosecutor and AG that were not always get. https://consortiumnews.com/2024/07/22/kamala-harriss-distinguished-career-of-serving-injustice-2/ The following isn't so much about Harris but about the process. Granted she has been basically crowned but she should face some opposition. I know Jill Stein can't win. She is the favorite of the face group I'm in. Even though Harris will win the nomination I would like to see here debate some one any way.
Outstanding writing. So many good points made, but this one stuck with me:
I wish journalists would be a tad less bored with the threatened demise of democracy. I wish they’d cover Trump like they cover hurricanes. When hurricanes approach, news outlets warn people. They don’t think, “We told them about hurricanes last year. This is just another one. It’s just ‘hurricanes being hurricanes.’”
This boredom with serious substance issues and trivializing of our politics by the mainstream “liberal” media has been weakening our democracy for decades. I urge everyone to read this article to see glaring examples of that kind of media malpractice that badly weakened Al Gore’s candidacy. Karl Rove and Co. came up with all kinds of dishonest things to throw at Gore to make him look ridiculous — like the phony charge that Gore had claimed to have invented the internet. That lie really hurt him with the twenty-something Dems who were my kids friends and I had to spend a lot of time debunking it. If you read the article below you will see that even Newt stood up for Gore’s role in helping get the internet created. (Gore had been the one who pushed Congress to fund the creation of an internet accessible to anyone — creating the “information superhighway”. Gore was so relentless I heard Newt said he had driven his colleagues crazy until they finally voted for the funds.)
The mainstream media’s treatment of Gore was deeply condescending and demeaning as it has been for so many Democratic candidates. For example David , the WaPo’s revered “Dean of Washington Journalists”, complained that Gore had talked too much in his acceptance speech about what he would do if elected! That much substance almost put the pathetic Broder to sleep. What I wanted to ask that callow fool was what he thought Gore should have talked about in his campaign to become the most powerful man in the world — his favorite movies or sports teams?
Even more despicable was the NYTimes’s Maureen Dowd trashing Gore for being so concerned about the environment and diversity that it made him seem so “feminized” he was “practically lactating”!! Who says women can’t be misogynists? I would bet had Dowd written something that was as disgustingly racist as that comment is disgustingly sexist the editors would have made her take it out of her column.
I think that you are so right on about the election results; if Kamala wins it will be a repeat of that Jan 6 mob and assault on our democracy. Interestingly enough, the confederate rebels planned the same thing to stop the counting of ballots by the VP. It never came to fruition but there was a plan. We must be prepared for this eventuality, trump says there will be blood. Especially if the Democrats win the election.
Remember that this time the government is in the control of the Biden adminstration, not Trump. You can bet they are already preparing for another coup attempt if Trump loses. FBI Director Wray has testified about the threats from rightwing domestic terrorists so you can be he takes this very seriously as does Biden’s military leaders. They will be well-prepared for trouble.
This has always been one of my pet peeves about so-called "objective" political reporting. They smuggle so much editorializing into their straight news stories! As you note, the frame changes how the audience will receive the story. They know this but pretend not to have opinions about the topics they cover.
One blatant example is the media’s obsessive coverage of inflation and giving the impression that it was Biden’s fault instead of informing people that every country had inflation as bad or worse. (Maybe Biden has superpowers a la Dark Brandon?) During that time period the US experienced strong economic growth and an impressive job market, which was not the case for other advanced countries. That was because they did not spend on economic investment programs like Biden did.
When the World Bank recently upgraded its prediction for global growth it specifically cited the fact that the US economy is so strong it is fueling the world economy — an amazing fact — most of the mainstream media either didn’t report the story or buried in it back pages. The Times did not post it in a prominent place and the headline about the strong US economy ended with a “but….”
Clearly the media is deliberately doing all they can to ignore or downplay the fact that the US economy under Biden has become the envy of the world. When poll after poll shows that people mistakenly think that the economy is bad or even in a recession, the media doesn’t blame themselves. Instead they falsely claim that people are judging based on their personal experiences and struggles with inflation. They know that poll after poll has shown that the majority of people say their own financial situations are good as is the economy in their city and their state but that the national economy is terrible. Clearly those people are not getting that impression from their personal situations and journalists have to know that but are choosing to be dishonest rather than admit their culpability in misleading the public on a critical issue.
Long time ago, like when the former Yugoslavia blew up, I tried to understand what was going on by following "the news." I couldn't do it. This was not a part of the world I knew much about, and "the news" provided minimal context for the breaking news and occasional human-interest story. So I turned to what's now called longform journalism -- and books. These days my reading is hugely supplemented by Substackers, e.g., Joyce Vance for legal matters and Heather Cox Richardson for history, and also by ProPublica.
I've got a question, though: Is this emphasis on easy-to-digest stories coming from the top, or from on-the-ground reporters, or (I'm guessing) a combination of both? It matters who's signing the paychecks, that's for sure. What's being taught around this in J-schools?
This is a very interesting piece because it identifies a key difference that empowers Tr*mp a great deal. While you correctly point out our media's shallowness when it comes to editorial capability, the problem we're facing is an outgrowth of that deficit. Namely that Tr*mp creates the news he wants to see, masterfully. He is able to manipulate the press to his liking and advantage!
This may be a sorry state of affairs, but as we often hear when inquiring about difficult repairs, "it is what it is." I think the answer is not to hope for a near miraculous change in the priorities of our media ecosystem, but to play it as it lay.
Democrats should be studying Tr*mp's artful abuse of the popular press, and learn how to mimic his success. Set an agenda, decide what they want to see get attention, and then lay out irresistible baubles for the press to pick up in the form of incendiary or outrageous statements, overhyped and breathless denunciations of the opposition, and even subtle twists to the other side's policy intentions. Why not?
As I see it, the compulsion for clickbait reflects a media imbalance caused by the right. Fox, Newsmax and all the right wing radio stations publish propaganda all day, every day. They are not required to report actual news bc the Fairness Doctrine is out the window. Until we return to something like the Fairness Doctrine (see the UK's impartiality rule), MSM has to compete with infotainment masquerading as news.
The media was doing this back in the nineties when Clinton was in office and Fox News was just getting started so it wasn’t a big influence. Their obsessive coverage of the Whitewater, Filegate, Travelgate and Chinagate pseudo-scandals was appalling. Those accusations which were peddled to the NY Times by rightwing operatives (google the Arkansas Project) were investigated by Special Prosecutor Robert Fiske and then by Independent Counsel Ken Starr using the full power of the FBI and millions of our tax dollars. They came up with absolutely nothing. The media never acknowledged they had let themselves be used by the right.
"If the Republican Party wins the upcoming election, it could be the last fair election in American history. And even if the Republicans lose, they’re plotting to dispute the results and cause chaos that may make Jan. 6 pale in comparison."
And we have to get this message out with very little help from the fourth estate. Huge bummer, but these immense fundraising and organizing calls are giving me hope. Give yourself a gold star every time you share this.
What a damning indictment of the way in which the media cover the news, that Harris's laugh gets more coverage than Trump's assertion that there will be no more voting in four years if he wins. At the very least, the latter should have resulted in banner headlines on a daily basis. But journalists should also have been battering down doors to have Trump answer their questions and hold him accountable. If Trump and his acolytes remain inaccessible to them or provide disingenuous responses, then that needs to be reported upon as well. It is the responsibility of the press, both, to ask questions, and to demand to have those questions answered.
The essential problem, however, is baked into the very fabric of our system where the thing that matters above all else is the bottom line. Anything as tiresome as the truth is of only secondary consequence.
Mark, I agree wholeheartedly. Of course it's not new. I wrote something very similar in the mid-1980s when I was a young journalist and editor of a small-town weekly in New Jersey. When I came into my office the next day someone had taped a newsletter to my door that said the biggest threat to America was the Jewish control of the media.
The sleepy press will be startled wide awake as soon as their empire is shut down if the nazi cult completes its current, active coup. The free press will be the FIRST victim of the domestic terrorists working overtime to consume all levers of power. At this point, because of their failures, I'm kinda ok with the downfall of the corporate outlets. Truly independent media has an open door now, and the American public is more than welcoming.
I think another big factor in this discussion is the way big Tech manipulates everything that we see and hear. Although that’s not new, the manipulation is incredibly divisive and is destroying our democracy faster every day. And now with Elon Musk, literally shutting down what he doesn’t like -that puts even more information in peril. If we had a working Congress and Senate, maybe we could put some guard rails in place but they don’t even seem to be able to do that. That’s why we have to vote and put in people who want to at least try to fix this.
I’m so tired of the clickbait “journalism”.
I’m so glad that there are honest journalists here on Substack. Lately, it’s the only place I can read about the news.
THIS. Heather Cox Richardson said she thinks the broken major media will be replaced by a grassroots effort....and Substack is a big part of it.
The problem with that is that it’s so fragmented that there isn’t any common source where people are getting their information. Most people don’t even know where to turn for it.
When it comes to political journalists I believe the kind of information they owe the public is the information that can help be informed citizens, to make vote based on substantive information, to be able to form and express our opinions based on the relevant facts, not spin. I believe that is why our Founders gave journalists special protection in the constitution. They didn’t do that to make sure they could entertain us and themselves with trivia and lies.
You’re totally right. They are criminally negligent if you ask me. But I don’t think they’re going to change anytime soon. I’m grateful for substack too.
I have been complaining about how horrible our mainstream media coverage is since the media decided to partner with the right wing Arkansas Project’s effort to take down Bill Clinton with phony scandal after phony scandal. There were multiple investigations of those pseudo-scandals — Whitewater, FIlegate, Travelgate, — conducted by Republicans and costing us taxpayers over $70 million dollars. Nothing was found except an affair despite the fact that Ken Starr had all the resources of the FBI put at his disposal by the Clinton-hating rightwinger Louie Freeh. (The media put Freeh on a pedestal, deeming him a “Boy Scout” when in fact he was constantly breaking DOJ rules by leaking to the media to hurt Clinton who had appointed him.) Then came the WMD lies, the dishonest smears against Gore and Kerry that the media either helped spread or refused to push back against. The media didn’t even get our outraged over the multiple investigations of the insane, vicious slander that the Clintons had murdered one of their closest friends, Vince Foster. They also didn’t try to hold Chicken Hawk Bush accountable for the disgusting Swift Boat Liars attacks on Kerry’s war heroism.
Back then most people didn’t seem to realize just how the media refusal to hold Republicans to account made them complicit with the rise of Republican extremism. Today it seems that has really changed. The outrage over the media’s non-coverage of Trump’s terrifying “you won’t have to vote again” speech and, worse, their white-washing of it’s meaning shows me that people have finally caught on to the media’s unwillingness to hold Republicans to the standards of our democracy . The fact that the NY Times only covered the speech after a barrage of criticism from the public and Dems tells me they are finally feeling intimidated by Democrats the way they have been intimidated by Republicans for decades.
Kamala is massively qualified and as close to pitch perfect as it gets. Trump is a deranged, demented, narcissistic sociopath who will destroy democracy. If the MSM reported the truth, there wouldn't be a race. Where are the ratings and dollars in that?
The thing is, the fact that one of our two major political parties went from being the party of Lincoln to being an openly authoritarian cult of personality that explicitly prefers dictatorships to democracies — a transformation that was decades in the making; it didn’t start in 2015 — is a big story! People would watch it and click on it!
So it’s not just about the ratings. As a former journalist myself, I don’t go in for extended conspiratorial rants about “the media,” but — it’s not just about ratings and clicks.
PS: If they reported the truth, there would still be a race. An overwhelming majority of Trump supporters knows exactly who he is and what he wants, and they want it too. There’s always been an element in this country that acts like an abusive spouse toward it—hates it while protesting to love it more than anyone. And that’s also a huge story that would send ratings through the roof. But they won’t do it.
I keep saying-- they're missing the story of the century! I wish I fully knew why, but what worries me is that it chills public discourse. People are afraid to speak out because they think "The New York Times never mentioned this--it must not be that big a deal."
I would not say she is close to pitch perfect. There are certainly things in her job as a prosecutor and AG that were not always get. https://consortiumnews.com/2024/07/22/kamala-harriss-distinguished-career-of-serving-injustice-2/ The following isn't so much about Harris but about the process. Granted she has been basically crowned but she should face some opposition. I know Jill Stein can't win. She is the favorite of the face group I'm in. Even though Harris will win the nomination I would like to see here debate some one any way.
Outstanding writing. So many good points made, but this one stuck with me:
I wish journalists would be a tad less bored with the threatened demise of democracy. I wish they’d cover Trump like they cover hurricanes. When hurricanes approach, news outlets warn people. They don’t think, “We told them about hurricanes last year. This is just another one. It’s just ‘hurricanes being hurricanes.’”
This boredom with serious substance issues and trivializing of our politics by the mainstream “liberal” media has been weakening our democracy for decades. I urge everyone to read this article to see glaring examples of that kind of media malpractice that badly weakened Al Gore’s candidacy. Karl Rove and Co. came up with all kinds of dishonest things to throw at Gore to make him look ridiculous — like the phony charge that Gore had claimed to have invented the internet. That lie really hurt him with the twenty-something Dems who were my kids friends and I had to spend a lot of time debunking it. If you read the article below you will see that even Newt stood up for Gore’s role in helping get the internet created. (Gore had been the one who pushed Congress to fund the creation of an internet accessible to anyone — creating the “information superhighway”. Gore was so relentless I heard Newt said he had driven his colleagues crazy until they finally voted for the funds.)
The mainstream media’s treatment of Gore was deeply condescending and demeaning as it has been for so many Democratic candidates. For example David , the WaPo’s revered “Dean of Washington Journalists”, complained that Gore had talked too much in his acceptance speech about what he would do if elected! That much substance almost put the pathetic Broder to sleep. What I wanted to ask that callow fool was what he thought Gore should have talked about in his campaign to become the most powerful man in the world — his favorite movies or sports teams?
Even more despicable was the NYTimes’s Maureen Dowd trashing Gore for being so concerned about the environment and diversity that it made him seem so “feminized” he was “practically lactating”!! Who says women can’t be misogynists? I would bet had Dowd written something that was as disgustingly racist as that comment is disgustingly sexist the editors would have made her take it out of her column.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/10/gore200710
I think that you are so right on about the election results; if Kamala wins it will be a repeat of that Jan 6 mob and assault on our democracy. Interestingly enough, the confederate rebels planned the same thing to stop the counting of ballots by the VP. It never came to fruition but there was a plan. We must be prepared for this eventuality, trump says there will be blood. Especially if the Democrats win the election.
KEEP WARNING VOTERS ! !
Remember that this time the government is in the control of the Biden adminstration, not Trump. You can bet they are already preparing for another coup attempt if Trump loses. FBI Director Wray has testified about the threats from rightwing domestic terrorists so you can be he takes this very seriously as does Biden’s military leaders. They will be well-prepared for trouble.
This has always been one of my pet peeves about so-called "objective" political reporting. They smuggle so much editorializing into their straight news stories! As you note, the frame changes how the audience will receive the story. They know this but pretend not to have opinions about the topics they cover.
One blatant example is the media’s obsessive coverage of inflation and giving the impression that it was Biden’s fault instead of informing people that every country had inflation as bad or worse. (Maybe Biden has superpowers a la Dark Brandon?) During that time period the US experienced strong economic growth and an impressive job market, which was not the case for other advanced countries. That was because they did not spend on economic investment programs like Biden did.
When the World Bank recently upgraded its prediction for global growth it specifically cited the fact that the US economy is so strong it is fueling the world economy — an amazing fact — most of the mainstream media either didn’t report the story or buried in it back pages. The Times did not post it in a prominent place and the headline about the strong US economy ended with a “but….”
Clearly the media is deliberately doing all they can to ignore or downplay the fact that the US economy under Biden has become the envy of the world. When poll after poll shows that people mistakenly think that the economy is bad or even in a recession, the media doesn’t blame themselves. Instead they falsely claim that people are judging based on their personal experiences and struggles with inflation. They know that poll after poll has shown that the majority of people say their own financial situations are good as is the economy in their city and their state but that the national economy is terrible. Clearly those people are not getting that impression from their personal situations and journalists have to know that but are choosing to be dishonest rather than admit their culpability in misleading the public on a critical issue.
Great piece Mark, thanks!
Long time ago, like when the former Yugoslavia blew up, I tried to understand what was going on by following "the news." I couldn't do it. This was not a part of the world I knew much about, and "the news" provided minimal context for the breaking news and occasional human-interest story. So I turned to what's now called longform journalism -- and books. These days my reading is hugely supplemented by Substackers, e.g., Joyce Vance for legal matters and Heather Cox Richardson for history, and also by ProPublica.
I've got a question, though: Is this emphasis on easy-to-digest stories coming from the top, or from on-the-ground reporters, or (I'm guessing) a combination of both? It matters who's signing the paychecks, that's for sure. What's being taught around this in J-schools?
Thank you for this.
This is a very interesting piece because it identifies a key difference that empowers Tr*mp a great deal. While you correctly point out our media's shallowness when it comes to editorial capability, the problem we're facing is an outgrowth of that deficit. Namely that Tr*mp creates the news he wants to see, masterfully. He is able to manipulate the press to his liking and advantage!
This may be a sorry state of affairs, but as we often hear when inquiring about difficult repairs, "it is what it is." I think the answer is not to hope for a near miraculous change in the priorities of our media ecosystem, but to play it as it lay.
Democrats should be studying Tr*mp's artful abuse of the popular press, and learn how to mimic his success. Set an agenda, decide what they want to see get attention, and then lay out irresistible baubles for the press to pick up in the form of incendiary or outrageous statements, overhyped and breathless denunciations of the opposition, and even subtle twists to the other side's policy intentions. Why not?
As I see it, the compulsion for clickbait reflects a media imbalance caused by the right. Fox, Newsmax and all the right wing radio stations publish propaganda all day, every day. They are not required to report actual news bc the Fairness Doctrine is out the window. Until we return to something like the Fairness Doctrine (see the UK's impartiality rule), MSM has to compete with infotainment masquerading as news.
The media was doing this back in the nineties when Clinton was in office and Fox News was just getting started so it wasn’t a big influence. Their obsessive coverage of the Whitewater, Filegate, Travelgate and Chinagate pseudo-scandals was appalling. Those accusations which were peddled to the NY Times by rightwing operatives (google the Arkansas Project) were investigated by Special Prosecutor Robert Fiske and then by Independent Counsel Ken Starr using the full power of the FBI and millions of our tax dollars. They came up with absolutely nothing. The media never acknowledged they had let themselves be used by the right.
"If the Republican Party wins the upcoming election, it could be the last fair election in American history. And even if the Republicans lose, they’re plotting to dispute the results and cause chaos that may make Jan. 6 pale in comparison."
And we have to get this message out with very little help from the fourth estate. Huge bummer, but these immense fundraising and organizing calls are giving me hope. Give yourself a gold star every time you share this.
What a damning indictment of the way in which the media cover the news, that Harris's laugh gets more coverage than Trump's assertion that there will be no more voting in four years if he wins. At the very least, the latter should have resulted in banner headlines on a daily basis. But journalists should also have been battering down doors to have Trump answer their questions and hold him accountable. If Trump and his acolytes remain inaccessible to them or provide disingenuous responses, then that needs to be reported upon as well. It is the responsibility of the press, both, to ask questions, and to demand to have those questions answered.
The essential problem, however, is baked into the very fabric of our system where the thing that matters above all else is the bottom line. Anything as tiresome as the truth is of only secondary consequence.
Mark, I agree wholeheartedly. Of course it's not new. I wrote something very similar in the mid-1980s when I was a young journalist and editor of a small-town weekly in New Jersey. When I came into my office the next day someone had taped a newsletter to my door that said the biggest threat to America was the Jewish control of the media.
The sleepy press will be startled wide awake as soon as their empire is shut down if the nazi cult completes its current, active coup. The free press will be the FIRST victim of the domestic terrorists working overtime to consume all levers of power. At this point, because of their failures, I'm kinda ok with the downfall of the corporate outlets. Truly independent media has an open door now, and the American public is more than welcoming.
Thank you Mark.
I think another big factor in this discussion is the way big Tech manipulates everything that we see and hear. Although that’s not new, the manipulation is incredibly divisive and is destroying our democracy faster every day. And now with Elon Musk, literally shutting down what he doesn’t like -that puts even more information in peril. If we had a working Congress and Senate, maybe we could put some guard rails in place but they don’t even seem to be able to do that. That’s why we have to vote and put in people who want to at least try to fix this.