It didn't take much sleuthing to figure out why the media is determined to focus the nation's attention on "Crisis at the Border!" even as more existential, but difficult- to- soundbite crises threaten to overwhelm us:
Barely two months into the post-Trump era, news outlets are indeed losing much of the audience and readership they gained during his chaotic presidency. In other words, journalism’s Trump bump may be giving way to a slump.
After a record-setting January, traffic to the nation’s most popular mainstream news sites, including The Washington Post, plummeted in February, according to the audience tracking firm ComScore. The top sites were also generally doing worse than in February of last year, when the pandemic became a major international news story. [snip]
The story is largely the same for cable and broadcast news. Audiences grew during the pandemic last spring and summer, remained high in the fall as Trump tried to fight his electoral defeat with false claims of voter fraud, and swelled in the first few weeks of 2021 when a mob attacked the Capitol and Trump became the first president in history to be impeached and acquitted twice. [snip]
The most deeply affected network is CNN. After surpassing rivals Fox News and MSNBC in January, the network has lost 45 percent of its prime-time audience in the past five weeks, according to Nielsen Media Research. MSNBC’s audience has dropped 26 percent in the same period. Fox News — the most Trump-friendly of the three networks in its prime-time opinion shows — has essentially regained its leading position by standing still; its ratings have fallen just 6 percent since the first weeks of the year. The cable networks declined to discuss their ratings outlook for this article.
But, of course, it always comes down to the Les Moonves dictum that, while the former guy's toxicity may be bad for the country, "it's damn good for CBS." (Let's not forget the role CNN, under "ratings whore" Jeff Zucker, played in Trump's rise, either.)
Last night, saying the quiet part loud, ABC News' anchor David Muir pressed a reporter on why won't the Biden Administration call it a 'crisis'!? begging for a reason why the ratings- starved networks can't get the Administration to help it boost their click-bait, ratings- boosting narrative (skip to 3:33).
If we have a "crisis" in this country -- and we do -- it's the fact that one of our two political parties is committed to an anti- democracy agenda, prefaced by the foiled insurrection on January 6. But that, and the renewal of America that's just begun under President Biden, doesn't stir the dark soul like "caravans of brown immigrants" does. Here's Ryan Cooper on the media's "crisis" crisis:
This is nonsense. There is a problem at the border, but it is not remotely a "crisis." It's an administrative challenge that could be solved easily with more resources and clear policy — not even ranking with, say, the importance of securing loose nuclear material, much less the ongoing global pandemic, or the truly civilization-threatening crisis of climate change. The mainstream media is in effect collaborating with Republicans to stoke unreasoning xenophobic panic. [snip]
The border situation "is a political crisis for the new president, with no easy way out," said NBC's Chuck Todd on Meet the Press over the weekend, exercising his considerable political influence to create that crisis. He contrasted the conservative demand of a "big wall and some stricter enforcement of the border" with progressive demands for "humane treatment for migrants fleeing violence … and a path to citizenship for those that are already here" — falsely implying that both are equally extreme and impossible.
It's true that it would be much cheaper and simpler to deflate the frenzy of media hysteria by doing what Trump did — basically closing the border, throwing penniless refugees back over it, and forcing Mexico to deal with the problem. Dealing with migrants in a fair and humane fashion will require money, patience, and good administration. But how better to solve a fake crisis created by Republicans and bored occupants of green rooms in Washington, D.C. than with a fake solution?
Cooper details what the media is determined to ignore in its reporting about the border situation. It's worth a read to help inoculate yourself against the bad faith "border crisis" stories you'll be seeing until the next shiny object appears from the media's assignment desk at Fox "News."
