Wow! Well written. The issue with traditional print media and it's baby (TV) and grand baby (social media), is that it was dying. The Trump/Hillary matchup along with the nearly 50/50 split of the electorate proved to be akin to adding ten superbowls worth of revenue to an industry that was desperate to reinvent itself to stay alive and relevant. Mergers & acquisitions reduced the number of independent publications, and many 'redundancies' (read: trained reporters) were eliminated in favor of minimizing cost. Meanwhile, clicks and likes were the new profit source. And with our hectic American culture and the explosion of competing businesses looking for viewer/consumer/reader attention, the whole "if it bleeds, it leads" mantra went into overdrive.
The timing was perfect for Trump, who was trained in media 'reality' TV, to leverage these hungry media outlets by throwing them a soundbite that sold clicks. Headlines that stood out and that got people paying attention. Of course, the attention was mostly anger and outrage — by people who agreed with Trump and by people who did not. That engagement meant big bucks for newsrooms which had been previously relegated to the loss leader role in a media conglomerate. Now they were becoming profit centers. And the more Trump gave them, the more they ate it up. He was like an owner throwing his dogs a bone. This rambling method of marketing himself via shocking tweets, memes, lies, attacks, and outright violations of the law — is part of his media-weaving, circus ringleader personality that allows everyone to pick and choose what they want to say about him.
He's certainly a job creator in that respect. And the media companies know that if he goes away, so does their big payday. They already know that Harris is going more by the Obama/Biden playbook when it comes to engagement with the press. On an as-needed basis. They rightly fear that if she wins, we will be back to business as usual and their numbers will plummet.
I think it was Michelle Wolf at the WH Correspondent's Dinner who said "He couldn't sell Trump steaks or Eric, but he sold you." And by my own experience, my MSNBC watching days are gone, replaced by all the newsletters I get, and Twitter (still). I do think they are afraid of being accused of liberal bias, so they both sides everything, while the MAGA base doesn't believe what they say anyway.
The NYT is becoming more shameless by the day - featuring Trump surrounded by adoring fans in NYC on its front page- on the morning after the debate. Try finding details of Kamala Harris’ speeches at the NC rallies in the election updates. Instead, we’re given a minute-by-minute account of Trump’s verbal droppings from AZ, with the headline: “Trump wants to eliminate taxes on overtime.”
“It appears Mister Trump has plans to help Americans, while I just don’t know enough about Kamala!” says swingvoter13455 in focus group 88652.
The dereliction of quality, honest reporting by the NYT is not only evident in the sanewashing of Trump’s “discourse,” but also amplified by omission of detail on anything Kamala Harris proposes in her many rallies and then complaining about the lack of detail, enough so that swing voter 23486 will be swayed toward those “detailed Trump proposals.”
And, of course, by peppering the campaign coverage with daily OpEd2386: “If Kamala Harris doesn’t do what I suggest, she will lose the election!” By Duke law professor 65272 who has no valid standing to be the arbiter of the Harris campaign’s economic plans.
The piece de resistance being its +3 R- weighted precious poll that showed Trump in the lead last weekend, I’m actively wondering if we can still consider the NYT “impartial.” Thank you for writing this optimistic and well reasoned argument against a timid both-sides prestige press, Brian. While I used to adore the good journalism of the NYT of yesteryear, I now find myself clicking on Off Message or the WaPo comments, instead, especially on Marc Thiessen columns. One of those two activities achieves more than making me laugh .:)
What a fine column. Your analysis helps (me) liberal readers of the NY Times, Washington Post and other major media outlets understand why (my) their feelings that the "liberal media" is averse to describing Trump as he is are legitimate .
I think the term "sanewashing" will be helpful.
BTW, Dana Bash's interview questions often came from a MAGA framing. When she somewhat incredulously asked Harris about her defense of Bidenomics, I wished Harris had responded to the non-verbal insult by attacking the media for failing to describe what recovering from a disaster like Trump/pandemic requires and giving credit to Biden/USA for "being #1" in the world in its recovery."
“I disagree with those who have suggested that the risk Trump poses to the free press is so high that news organizations such as mine should cast aside neutrality and directly oppose his reelection.”
I’d like for someone to ask him for an example of someone saying that (pseudonymous internet randos don’t count). When (not if) he can’t come up with one, I’d like someone to ask him why he’s afraid to quote what his liberal critics are actually saying, and why his supposed dedication to the free exchange of ideas doesn’t extend that far.
Of course, the same people who will still be criticizing Harris for not talking with them enough (which really means sitting and taking their abuse) absolutely refuse to listen to anyone who can’t pay to get into a gala.
This is a great articulation of legacy media’s major impact on non-MAGA, everyday people’s ability/willingnesse to perceive Trump (and by extension MAGA) as just another political option.
My 80 year old mom gets her news exclusively from legacy media. She has never watched FOX and is a devoted NPR supporter. She is a born and raised Republican but has voted for democratic presidential candidates since Clinton’s second term. While she is appalled by Trump, she has been adamant that the Republican politicians who supported him were not any worse than the more left-oriented Democrats who opposed him. Her biggest take-away from the last 9 years is that ALL politicians will do whatever they need to win or stay in office, and therefore none of them are trustworthy or sincere in their efforts. This has been a source of contention for years, and nothing I have provided for her to read or watch moved her opinion.
…until legacy media began to cover the Trump campaign and especially Trump with greater fidelity to his language and behavior. All of a sudden, Mom is telling ME about how wack Trump sounds, and how incomprehensible most of his speeches are. She’s pointing out connections between his surrogates and him, and seems truly uplifted (and maybe validated) each time a big name Republican endorses Harris.
Its made me realize how much she was relying on legacy media for her understanding of our political situation. When she was telling me this morning about how Trump has suddenly began to show signs of even greater impairment than Biden was, I asked her when she started to notice this, and she said it had become really apparent over the last several weeks.
My mother holds an MS in Mathematics and is not unintelligent. But she is also not intellectually curious or prone to critical reading or thought. I’m guessing she might be way more “normal” than I am, and if she represents a big part of the electorate, it makes legacy media a far more culpable participant in the rise and endurance of trumpism.
While the traditional media does such a poor job of reporting on the orange lump’s derangement, most of his cult followers get all their news from faux and extreme right wing podcasts. This is the age of misinformation and lies.
NYT persists in passive-voice sentence structure when reporting on tRump...even ostensibly critical pieces rely on that old dodge. Maybe Times reporters have been taught that way...or maybe their editors do the rewrites, but it does inform much of the writing there, particularly politics, and especially when writing about tRump.
Yeah I give the useless fop Peter Baker no credit for his supposed acknowledgement. He reported Trump’s inability to speak in actual sentences like it was breaking news he’d sleuthed out exclusively.
And remember, this is the same Peter Baker who DID find out exclusively that Trump sent Rudy Giuliani to Ukraine to talk with Russians about making up an investigation of the Bidens, and reported it as bad news for Joe Biden. He literally couldn’t see the actual story.
I think Atrios used to have a running joke about the way conventional journalists would clutch their pearls whenever those pesky bloggers would be uncivil enough to point out the emperor has no clothes. His snarky rejoinder was “Time to convene another blogger ethics panel.”
I did notice this morning that more than half the opinion stories that popped up in my WaPo app were positive for Harris. First time Trump hasn't been favored this year (I think - relying on memory). So maybe the tide is turning and some of the most egregious sanewashing will stop. We can but hope. Thanks for keeping the real journalism gig alive.
There's also the problem of media being bought by right wingers who then force a pro-Trump POV on the editorial side. Case in point: Politico, formerly known as "Tiger Beat On The Potomac" for their dedicated willingness to be the leading groupthinker of the DC Press Corpse, was bought by far right German media mogul and rabid pro-Trumper Axel Springer, and now they've become "Volkischer Beobachter On The Potomac."
The big problem is the inbred groupthink of the Press Corpse. That and the fact the over-educated, under-intelligent, otherwise-unemployable low achievers of the upper middle class in the Press Corpse are terrified their name will be on the next list of the superfluous when the intergalactioc widgetmaker who employs them decides to do more "right sizing." With the result that we have the situation Sinclair Lewis alluded to 90 years ago when he poointed out how difficult it is to get someone to see the truth when their paycheck requires they not see it.
Here are a couple of my thoughts, and a few key quotes from that opinion piece:
There are many examples of Trump’s anti-democratic and criminal-adjacent desires that are ‘overlooked’ by the press. The author says the following example is the press just sucking at their job, as opposed to ‘sane-washing’ Trump. To me, this is a prime example of sane-washing. I had heard about it that very day.
"Rather than sane-washing, the greater risk has been that some of Trump’s alarming comments would get lost in the daily news cycle. Last September, for example, Trump proposed shooting shoplifters on sight—straightforwardly advocating extrajudicial murder of nonviolent criminal suspects. This wasn’t reported by The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, or PBS for days, if ever. The New York Times wrote it up four days later, playing the story on page 14 of its print edition."
While the press does fail in reporting and following up on some of Trump’s ‘crazy’ there is this:
"An April poll by NBC News found that voters who read newspapers preferred Joe Biden over Trump 70 percent to 21 percent, whereas Trump led 53 percent to 27 percent among people who said they don’t follow political news. Trump’s enduring support is indeed worth puzzling over, but the answer is unlikely to be found by parsing mainstream media coverage."
Trump's love of the ‘poorly educated’ is well-founded. It’s encouraging to find that the curious and educated overwhelmingly understand the threat he poses and the good work Biden has done. But that is probably about only 50% of the voting public.
The author's concluding statement should probably be a footnote on every bit of reporting on Trump:
"No doubt Trump is held to a lower standard—but this is largely because he so frequently lives down to that standard. There aren’t enough reporters in America to cover every one of his delusional claims, mental slips, or chaotic monologues."
I share your hope that the press does a better job, but for the most part it probably doesn't move the needle for the curious and well-informed. Or the uninterested and undereducated, that are still 'undecided', or by default in Trump's camp right now.
"how much the reporting of Trump necessarily edits and parses his words, to force it into sequential paragraphs or impose meaning where it is difficult to detect.” That's putting it mildly 007.
I’m going to guess that trump will be seen less and less over the next few weeks. I’m guessing they’ll give him little venues like fire stations where he can’t do much damage and rely on their ads in swing states as the curtain behind which the man will hide. It will be up to the media to make it as big a deal that he has gone missing as they made it when they thought Harris was taking too long to talk to them. So, that’s fun.
Also, Harris needs to do at least one town hall preferably more, and invite every single undecided person who has been interviewed in the aftermath of the debate. Call them out and let them ask whatever question it is that would help them “know enough about her”. Interviews with journalists, imho, will be less influential than seeing her interact with actual voters.
Great column Brian and I agree with your conclusion. Trying to correct the media is far more meaningful then reaching out to a couple of acquaintances to educate them. You didn’t mention the outrageous mark penn attack on ABC. I hope you will out this disgusting shill.
Wow! Well written. The issue with traditional print media and it's baby (TV) and grand baby (social media), is that it was dying. The Trump/Hillary matchup along with the nearly 50/50 split of the electorate proved to be akin to adding ten superbowls worth of revenue to an industry that was desperate to reinvent itself to stay alive and relevant. Mergers & acquisitions reduced the number of independent publications, and many 'redundancies' (read: trained reporters) were eliminated in favor of minimizing cost. Meanwhile, clicks and likes were the new profit source. And with our hectic American culture and the explosion of competing businesses looking for viewer/consumer/reader attention, the whole "if it bleeds, it leads" mantra went into overdrive.
The timing was perfect for Trump, who was trained in media 'reality' TV, to leverage these hungry media outlets by throwing them a soundbite that sold clicks. Headlines that stood out and that got people paying attention. Of course, the attention was mostly anger and outrage — by people who agreed with Trump and by people who did not. That engagement meant big bucks for newsrooms which had been previously relegated to the loss leader role in a media conglomerate. Now they were becoming profit centers. And the more Trump gave them, the more they ate it up. He was like an owner throwing his dogs a bone. This rambling method of marketing himself via shocking tweets, memes, lies, attacks, and outright violations of the law — is part of his media-weaving, circus ringleader personality that allows everyone to pick and choose what they want to say about him.
He's certainly a job creator in that respect. And the media companies know that if he goes away, so does their big payday. They already know that Harris is going more by the Obama/Biden playbook when it comes to engagement with the press. On an as-needed basis. They rightly fear that if she wins, we will be back to business as usual and their numbers will plummet.
I think it was Michelle Wolf at the WH Correspondent's Dinner who said "He couldn't sell Trump steaks or Eric, but he sold you." And by my own experience, my MSNBC watching days are gone, replaced by all the newsletters I get, and Twitter (still). I do think they are afraid of being accused of liberal bias, so they both sides everything, while the MAGA base doesn't believe what they say anyway.
I'm off twitter and on substack.
I just gifted this article to a friend who is an editor for CBS news…
The NYT is becoming more shameless by the day - featuring Trump surrounded by adoring fans in NYC on its front page- on the morning after the debate. Try finding details of Kamala Harris’ speeches at the NC rallies in the election updates. Instead, we’re given a minute-by-minute account of Trump’s verbal droppings from AZ, with the headline: “Trump wants to eliminate taxes on overtime.”
“It appears Mister Trump has plans to help Americans, while I just don’t know enough about Kamala!” says swingvoter13455 in focus group 88652.
The dereliction of quality, honest reporting by the NYT is not only evident in the sanewashing of Trump’s “discourse,” but also amplified by omission of detail on anything Kamala Harris proposes in her many rallies and then complaining about the lack of detail, enough so that swing voter 23486 will be swayed toward those “detailed Trump proposals.”
And, of course, by peppering the campaign coverage with daily OpEd2386: “If Kamala Harris doesn’t do what I suggest, she will lose the election!” By Duke law professor 65272 who has no valid standing to be the arbiter of the Harris campaign’s economic plans.
The piece de resistance being its +3 R- weighted precious poll that showed Trump in the lead last weekend, I’m actively wondering if we can still consider the NYT “impartial.” Thank you for writing this optimistic and well reasoned argument against a timid both-sides prestige press, Brian. While I used to adore the good journalism of the NYT of yesteryear, I now find myself clicking on Off Message or the WaPo comments, instead, especially on Marc Thiessen columns. One of those two activities achieves more than making me laugh .:)
What a fine column. Your analysis helps (me) liberal readers of the NY Times, Washington Post and other major media outlets understand why (my) their feelings that the "liberal media" is averse to describing Trump as he is are legitimate .
I think the term "sanewashing" will be helpful.
BTW, Dana Bash's interview questions often came from a MAGA framing. When she somewhat incredulously asked Harris about her defense of Bidenomics, I wished Harris had responded to the non-verbal insult by attacking the media for failing to describe what recovering from a disaster like Trump/pandemic requires and giving credit to Biden/USA for "being #1" in the world in its recovery."
“I disagree with those who have suggested that the risk Trump poses to the free press is so high that news organizations such as mine should cast aside neutrality and directly oppose his reelection.”
I’d like for someone to ask him for an example of someone saying that (pseudonymous internet randos don’t count). When (not if) he can’t come up with one, I’d like someone to ask him why he’s afraid to quote what his liberal critics are actually saying, and why his supposed dedication to the free exchange of ideas doesn’t extend that far.
Of course, the same people who will still be criticizing Harris for not talking with them enough (which really means sitting and taking their abuse) absolutely refuse to listen to anyone who can’t pay to get into a gala.
This is a great articulation of legacy media’s major impact on non-MAGA, everyday people’s ability/willingnesse to perceive Trump (and by extension MAGA) as just another political option.
My 80 year old mom gets her news exclusively from legacy media. She has never watched FOX and is a devoted NPR supporter. She is a born and raised Republican but has voted for democratic presidential candidates since Clinton’s second term. While she is appalled by Trump, she has been adamant that the Republican politicians who supported him were not any worse than the more left-oriented Democrats who opposed him. Her biggest take-away from the last 9 years is that ALL politicians will do whatever they need to win or stay in office, and therefore none of them are trustworthy or sincere in their efforts. This has been a source of contention for years, and nothing I have provided for her to read or watch moved her opinion.
…until legacy media began to cover the Trump campaign and especially Trump with greater fidelity to his language and behavior. All of a sudden, Mom is telling ME about how wack Trump sounds, and how incomprehensible most of his speeches are. She’s pointing out connections between his surrogates and him, and seems truly uplifted (and maybe validated) each time a big name Republican endorses Harris.
Its made me realize how much she was relying on legacy media for her understanding of our political situation. When she was telling me this morning about how Trump has suddenly began to show signs of even greater impairment than Biden was, I asked her when she started to notice this, and she said it had become really apparent over the last several weeks.
My mother holds an MS in Mathematics and is not unintelligent. But she is also not intellectually curious or prone to critical reading or thought. I’m guessing she might be way more “normal” than I am, and if she represents a big part of the electorate, it makes legacy media a far more culpable participant in the rise and endurance of trumpism.
Thanks for an excellent essay.
While the traditional media does such a poor job of reporting on the orange lump’s derangement, most of his cult followers get all their news from faux and extreme right wing podcasts. This is the age of misinformation and lies.
NYT persists in passive-voice sentence structure when reporting on tRump...even ostensibly critical pieces rely on that old dodge. Maybe Times reporters have been taught that way...or maybe their editors do the rewrites, but it does inform much of the writing there, particularly politics, and especially when writing about tRump.
Yeah I give the useless fop Peter Baker no credit for his supposed acknowledgement. He reported Trump’s inability to speak in actual sentences like it was breaking news he’d sleuthed out exclusively.
And remember, this is the same Peter Baker who DID find out exclusively that Trump sent Rudy Giuliani to Ukraine to talk with Russians about making up an investigation of the Bidens, and reported it as bad news for Joe Biden. He literally couldn’t see the actual story.
Baker proudly assumes the mantle of poster-boy for the Times failing journalistic ethos.
I think Atrios used to have a running joke about the way conventional journalists would clutch their pearls whenever those pesky bloggers would be uncivil enough to point out the emperor has no clothes. His snarky rejoinder was “Time to convene another blogger ethics panel.”
I did notice this morning that more than half the opinion stories that popped up in my WaPo app were positive for Harris. First time Trump hasn't been favored this year (I think - relying on memory). So maybe the tide is turning and some of the most egregious sanewashing will stop. We can but hope. Thanks for keeping the real journalism gig alive.
There's also the problem of media being bought by right wingers who then force a pro-Trump POV on the editorial side. Case in point: Politico, formerly known as "Tiger Beat On The Potomac" for their dedicated willingness to be the leading groupthinker of the DC Press Corpse, was bought by far right German media mogul and rabid pro-Trumper Axel Springer, and now they've become "Volkischer Beobachter On The Potomac."
The big problem is the inbred groupthink of the Press Corpse. That and the fact the over-educated, under-intelligent, otherwise-unemployable low achievers of the upper middle class in the Press Corpse are terrified their name will be on the next list of the superfluous when the intergalactioc widgetmaker who employs them decides to do more "right sizing." With the result that we have the situation Sinclair Lewis alluded to 90 years ago when he poointed out how difficult it is to get someone to see the truth when their paycheck requires they not see it.
Thank you!!!
In the same vein, but a lot less intelligent, was this that I read this morning: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/09/media-trump-sane-washing/679849
Here are a couple of my thoughts, and a few key quotes from that opinion piece:
There are many examples of Trump’s anti-democratic and criminal-adjacent desires that are ‘overlooked’ by the press. The author says the following example is the press just sucking at their job, as opposed to ‘sane-washing’ Trump. To me, this is a prime example of sane-washing. I had heard about it that very day.
"Rather than sane-washing, the greater risk has been that some of Trump’s alarming comments would get lost in the daily news cycle. Last September, for example, Trump proposed shooting shoplifters on sight—straightforwardly advocating extrajudicial murder of nonviolent criminal suspects. This wasn’t reported by The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, or PBS for days, if ever. The New York Times wrote it up four days later, playing the story on page 14 of its print edition."
While the press does fail in reporting and following up on some of Trump’s ‘crazy’ there is this:
"An April poll by NBC News found that voters who read newspapers preferred Joe Biden over Trump 70 percent to 21 percent, whereas Trump led 53 percent to 27 percent among people who said they don’t follow political news. Trump’s enduring support is indeed worth puzzling over, but the answer is unlikely to be found by parsing mainstream media coverage."
Trump's love of the ‘poorly educated’ is well-founded. It’s encouraging to find that the curious and educated overwhelmingly understand the threat he poses and the good work Biden has done. But that is probably about only 50% of the voting public.
The author's concluding statement should probably be a footnote on every bit of reporting on Trump:
"No doubt Trump is held to a lower standard—but this is largely because he so frequently lives down to that standard. There aren’t enough reporters in America to cover every one of his delusional claims, mental slips, or chaotic monologues."
I share your hope that the press does a better job, but for the most part it probably doesn't move the needle for the curious and well-informed. Or the uninterested and undereducated, that are still 'undecided', or by default in Trump's camp right now.
"how much the reporting of Trump necessarily edits and parses his words, to force it into sequential paragraphs or impose meaning where it is difficult to detect.” That's putting it mildly 007.
WaPo had this heading in their newsletter today: "Today’s Opinions: How Fox News sane-washes Trump"
I surely hope that the narrative won't become that sane washing is just a Fox News problem.
I’m going to guess that trump will be seen less and less over the next few weeks. I’m guessing they’ll give him little venues like fire stations where he can’t do much damage and rely on their ads in swing states as the curtain behind which the man will hide. It will be up to the media to make it as big a deal that he has gone missing as they made it when they thought Harris was taking too long to talk to them. So, that’s fun.
Also, Harris needs to do at least one town hall preferably more, and invite every single undecided person who has been interviewed in the aftermath of the debate. Call them out and let them ask whatever question it is that would help them “know enough about her”. Interviews with journalists, imho, will be less influential than seeing her interact with actual voters.
Great column Brian and I agree with your conclusion. Trying to correct the media is far more meaningful then reaching out to a couple of acquaintances to educate them. You didn’t mention the outrageous mark penn attack on ABC. I hope you will out this disgusting shill.