QOTD: A Reckoning We Ought To Have

 

Margaret Sullivan, writing in The Guardian on the media's unbalanced and misdirected reporting:

"There’s plenty of blame to go around for Biden’s ultimate loss – and the horrors that it brought the whole world in the election of Donald Trump to a second term. Bruce Springsteen laid it out to a concert audience last week as he opened his European tour: “My home, the America I love, that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.”

As a media critic, I’m always happy to see a good reckoning for the mainstream press.

But this one makes me wonder. When is the reckoning coming for the failures to cover Trump effectively?

At what point will there be a general acknowledgment and some serious self-scrutiny about the way big media failed to adequately convey what would happen if Trump were elected again? [snip]

What do you investigate? What is the precise wording of that news alert? How prominently do you display that story? Whom do you quote and to whom do you grant anonymity? What photo do you choose? Do you use terms like “straining the bounds of propriety” to describe what looks more like a bribe?

So if the media were going to put their thumb on the scale – as they inevitably do – they ought to have done so in defense of democracy, the rule of law and human decency.

The failure to do so is playing out in our shattered world, and at a frightening pace.

That’s a reckoning we ought to have, but I doubt we ever will."  (our emphasis)

Ms. Sullivan's entire opinion is important and well worth the read.