The Guardian's Margaret Sullivan looks at the failing mainstream media as they create false equivalences and "news" that helps the Republican / Shooters / Forced Birth cult of the Malignant Loser. An excerpt from her excellent article:
'The big problem is that the mainstream media wants to be seen as non-partisan – a reasonable goal – and bends over backwards to accomplish this. If this means equalizing an anti-democratic candidate with a pro-democracy candidate, then so be it.
Add to this the obsession with the “horse race” aspect of the campaign, and the profit-driven desire to increase the potential news audience to include Trump voters, and you’ve got the kind of problematic coverage discussed above.
It’s fearful, it’s defensive, it’s entertainment – and click-focused, and it’s mired in the washed-up practices of an earlier era.
The big solution? Remember at all times what our core mission is: to communicate truthfully, keeping top of mind that we have a public service mission to inform the electorate and hold powerful people to account. If that’s our north star, as it should be, every editorial judgment will reflect that.
Headlines will include context, not just deliver political messaging. Overall politics coverage will reflect 'not the odds, but the stakes', as NYU’s Jay Rosen elegantly put it. Lies and liars won’t get a platform and a megaphone.
And media leaders will think hard about the big picture of what they are getting across to the public, and whether it is fair and truthful. Imagine if the New York Times, among others, had stopped and done a course correction on their over-the-top coverage of Clinton’s emails during the 2016 campaign. We might be living in a different world." (our emphasis)
That different world would have dealt with immigration, the COVID 19 pandemic, our foreign adversaries and friends, and our domestic divisions in a rational and productive way, not the way a would-be autocrat and demagogue did. Keeping the heat on the press to follow that "north star" of truth is essential as we face the greatest threat to our democracy ever in the candidacy of the Malignant Loser.
