It All Matters

Today is my last day at Splinter news dot com, but this isn’t about me. It’s about the dire importance of having vocal, unapologetically left wing media outlets in 2018 and going forward.

I’ve been thinking a lot about something Adam Serwer wrote shortly after the election on the media’s relative impotence in holding the Trump administration accountable (emphasis mine):

Another obstacle is that media objectivity is not a fixed point. It is carefully calibrated to the perception of public opinion, because media organizations do not want to alienate their intended audience. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews offers a telling example of how media figures shift to identify with their perceived audience, which can ultimately mean cozying up to power. During George W. Bush’s absurd war pageantry in May 2003, Matthews remarked that Bush looked like a “high-flying jet star,” and that Bush “won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics.” The Iraq War is arguably still ongoing.

The Matthews episode illustrates that in addition to reporting itself being manipulated, members of the media themselves engaged in careful brand-management exercises in order to portray themselves as in touch with “Real America,” granting themselves permission to dismiss criticisms of the Bush administration as the ravings of pampered liberal elites. Only days after the 2016 presidential election, this process is already taking place, with prominent media figures seeking to defend the victorious Trump coalition against the slights of those religious and ethnic minorities who fear for their fate under a president who campaigned using them as scapegoats for the nation’s problems.

Adversarial coverage of the Bush administration notably increased once his approval ratings dipped so low that media figures felt as though they were reflecting public opinion when they criticized him. The Bush administration’s ability to shape the narrative in the aftermath of public crises like Hurricane Katrina was noticeably diminished, because unlike with Iraq, reporters could contrast official statements with what they saw with their own lives. Trump’s ability to forge an alternate universe of belief for himself and his supporters suggests that reality may prove far less of an obstacle for him than it was for Bush.

All of Serwer’s predictions two years ago have been borne out by reality. While mainstream news outlets have published vital reporting since Donald Trump took office, they have also published a lot of dumb shit. They have played into the Trump administration’s crocodile-tear calls for “civility,” which has only emboldened the president and his allies to continue plowing ahead with their toxic agenda.

What we need now, more than ever, are strong, openly adversarial media outlets. (The fact that GMG is unionized plays a big role in our ability to write and report aggressively about this administration.) We need an opposition media that lives up to Fox News’ hyperbole about left wing Marxist media.