Something is wrong with this split-screen picture. On one side, former president Donald Trump rants about mass deportations and claims to have stopped “wars with France,” after being described by his longest-serving White House chief of staff as a literal fascist. On the other side, commentators debate whether Vice President Kamala Harris performed well enough at a CNN town hall to “close the deal.”
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Let’s review: First, Harris was criticized for not doing enough interviews — so she did multiple interviews, including with nontraditional media. She was criticized for not doing hostile interviews — so she went toe to toe with Bret Baier of Fox News. She was criticized as being comfortable only at scripted rallies — so she did unscripted events, such as the town hall on Wednesday. Along the way, she wiped the floor with Trump during their one televised debate.
Trump, meanwhile, stands before his MAGA crowds and spews nonstop lies, ominous threats, impossible promises and utter gibberish. His rhetoric is dismissed, or looked past, without first being interrogated.
The truth is not better but there’s some nuance. Major media do not usually care about being for or against fascism. They care about clicks, and following “journalistic ethics” that boil down to Enlightened Centrism™ and bothsidesism.
Their billionaire owners don’t even have to interfere (most of the time). The system self-selects to make money through a shared set of beliefs in what constitutes “proper journalism”. This makes journalists, as a profession, ontologically incapable of fighting against fascists. They truly, honestly, firmly believe that “Fascist about to win US Presidency” is not a statement of fact.
It’s the same ideological pitfalls that makes Serious Media pit science against whichever anti-science fad is trendy right now. Vaccines, “climatic skepticism”, etc. anything goes and the journalists in charge truly genuinely from their heart believe that is a fair and balanced approach.
Not to say there aren’t actual conspiracies from time to time of course, but even actual independent traditional journalism has generally failed to accurately report on the rise of fascism.
No, they definitely care for Trump to be elected. Major media is owned by oligarchs. Oligarchs support fascism. Plan and simple
Like most conspiracy theories, there is a huge grain of truth there. Bush should have done 9/11 because it benefitted him in literally every way. Yet he did not.
Today’s WaPo scandal illustrates the more real situation quite well: usually the billionaires take a mostly hands-off approach to owning a paper. They don’t need to meddle. The journalists are ontologically incapable of being truly disruptive regardless of if the paper is owned by Bezos or funded by an independent government committee. That Bezos presumably felt the need to prevent the WaPo from endorsing Harris was unusual and a big enough deal for the journalists to raise a big stink. And as someone who lives in a country that has a strong tradition of independent and state-funded journalism (that doesn’t shy away from criticizing the government)… I can tell you it’s not very different from the rest. Certainly not as left-wing as it gets, and just as vulnerable to the fallacies I described.
That is not to say there is no outright corruption of big prestigious papers, or that oligarchs owning the press isn’t a massive, glaring threat to Democracy. But beware of oversimplifying such issues. For one because you might regret making such sweeping statements when the billionaires actually decide to wield their power, Murdoch style. And for two because you might be disappointed to find that prestigious independently owned papers aren’t so much better. Don’t expect them to start printing Marxist pamphlets any time soon if that’s what you are into.
No, we are not talking about Marxist. In fact I said fascists which you keep stesteering away from. Who pays you toispread propaganda?