Hey all. Parker here.
Over the weekend, I read a really interesting bit of media criticism by Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick. Her piece, “Welcome to Me Mountain,” explores a common frustration for journalists and readers alike. News-watchers will ask why journalists aren’t covering a story, and journalists will note that yes, they are in fact covering the thing that supposedly isn’t being covered. From her piece [bolded emphasis mine]:
[W]e happen to find ourselves in a moment in which the news is being accused of failing to deliver existential, five-alarm-fire reporting on creeping fascism, and global authoritarianism, even as it is doing quite a bit of five-alarm creeping fascism reporting. More and more, the complaint I hear is not that nobody is producing important news, but rather that the Media is failing to deliver that news directly to readers and listeners, in the manner of the mother bird with the worm in Are You My Mother? The critique isn’t so much that I am not writing the right things, as it is that readers are not reading the right things, which is somehow also my fault and also the fault of corporate media. But I promise, hand to heart, those creeping fascism stories are written and broadcast every day in prominent, fact-checked, sober publications. I just don’t know if those publications are making it to your doorstep or your television screen or your phone.
“The critique isn’t so much that I am not writing the right things, as it is that readers are not reading the right things, which is somehow also my fault and the fault of corporate media” is a great summary of the problem. And while I agree that it’s not any individual journalist’s fault if people aren’t “reading the right things,” I think she may be letting corporate media as a whole off the hook. I’ll explain.
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Her piece is a look at our “filter bubbles.” She notes that other reporting has found that “large swaths of voters have never even heard of Trump’s overt threats to the rule of democracy,” and concludes that “it’s not that [those voters] simply failed to ‘pay attention’ as we like to mourn; it’s that they have quite specifically organized their news not to tell them about it.” And, for the most part, I think she’s right — with a few caveats.
This does a great job of explaining why Fox viewers might not ever see a straight news story about something that makes conservatives look bad, but what’s the excuse for people who do read outlets like the New York Times or Washington Post? Are these outlets let off the hook because somewhere in their pages they report on an issue that people argue isn’t getting enough coverage? Does specific placement in the papers and websites really not matter?
Let’s take a look at a very recent example: Donald Trump’s Saturday speech in which he said that some immigrants aren’t people and made a controversial comment about “blood shed” that would follow a loss for him this fall.
This was the front page of Sunday’s Times:
And this was Monday’s Times front page:
Notice anything? There’s not a single story about Trump’s comments. This isn’t to say that the Times didn’t cover the remarks. They did.
And they even ran a story following up on the comments.
Over the weekend, I saw comments from people saying that the Times had not covered the story. This is precisely the kind of thing Lithwick is talking about. They did cover it! Still, I can empathize with people who think that these comments should have warranted a spot on the front page of the paper. Instead, what we got was a story about “How Trump’s Allies Are Winning the War Over Disinformation” (by which they mean how Trump’s lies are running relatively unchecked by social media platforms).
I think the point is less that outlets aren’t covering things at all, but that people at these organizations whose jobs it is to determine what ends up on the front page of the paper, what gets sent out as a push notification to subscriber phones, and what gets heavily featured on social media aren’t prioritizing the right stories (in the minds of the critics).
We absolutely should consider our own blind spots when it comes to the news, but a bit of hollering at the powers that be within news organizations doesn’t hurt.
Overall, I think Lithwick’s piece makes a good point (please check out the piece), even if I think it could be a bit more generous to critics.
That’s it for me today. As always, thanks for reading. I’ll be back tomorrow with another edition of The Present Age.
Parker
It seems to me most people don't read anything beyond the headline. So the message they get is Trump winning against disinformation ABOUT Trump, not the other way around.
Amen, that hectoring those who work at major media outlets does work.
If it didn't, why would the Right have been doing it for 40+ years?
The fact that the Left, Center, and other groups are now finally beginning to "work the refs" almost as hard as the Right is a huge part of why many at the top of media orgs like the NYTimes & Washington Post are pissed at much of the rest of the media right now.
Keep workin' the refs, good folks.