The Mainstream Press Is Hostile to the Concept of Protest

“Democrats enter risky political terrain as protests grip California” is the kind of headline you would expect to see in a pro-Trump newspaper pretending to do journalism, which is why it appeared in the New York Times. This article is virtually indistinguishable from Trump’s talking points, where its entire premise is situated on the notion that protest is unpopular and Trump is primarily targeting criminals in these ICE raids (which even Republicans like Reps. David Valado and Tony Gonzalez admit is not happening). That it has to use John Fetterman, perhaps the least popular Democrat in America and someone whose power in the Democratic caucus is incredibly marginalized, to represent Democratic positions, gives you a window into how craven and cynical this piece is and how it is anything but journalism. It cites old generic polling to support its bankrupt thesis when all new polling on this specific instance of Trump invading American cities reveals it to be broadly unpopular, with sending Marines into Los Angeles polling underwater by double digits.

But it’s far from the only mainstream article that is inventing fake news in an attempt to be overtly hostile to the protests taking place right now. In fact, you can find another headline in the New York Times that downplays the actions of the police who were caught on camera deliberately shooting at journalists. Whoever wrote the headline “L.A. protests prompt calls for police restraint after journalist injuries” is no friend to journalism, as it is yet another headline about police violence that deliberately separates the police from their own actions. Even this Associated Press headline that is much more direct and honest about what actually happened still fails to name who “shot and roughed up” reporters. We have decades of data at this point strongly suggesting that many “journalists” view their core role as being a PR arm for the police, and when a cop fires their gun, it’s the “journalists” job to make sure their readers aren’t sure who pulled the trigger or why folks might come out and protest afterwards.

CNN’s Jake Tapper, no stranger to propagating fake news on behalf of those in power, just reposted a Thomas Chatterton Williams tweet comparing the January 6th insurrection to immigration protesters. This is a terrific window into the mind of mainstream media’s braindead elite, as anything they can call chaos is all put under the same banner that offends their Very Serious sensibilities. People like Tapper and his litany of allies in media are nothing more than hackish actors pretending to be journalists for the cameras. They have no real principles other than inflating their own egos and TV ratings.

This is all by design, as the incentive structure around covering protests has been firmly established by the owners of major media. As MSNBC’s Chris Hayes astutely noted, “if you pull off protests that are polite and civil, even if large, they will struggle to get coverage.” This is because the mainstream media’s animating principle is not journalism, but sensationalism. The media is not shy about manufacturing sensationalism to produce literal fake news, as this photo from 2017 proves.

But if a few people in masks start lighting stuff on fire? Then you have news. This creates an *enormous* attentional advantage towards the most violent and chaotic kind of protest.

[image or embed]

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes.bsky.social) June 10, 2025 at 2:10 PM

This was a formidable experience for me in my journey into journalism, and I will never forget this photo as it informed me about American media’s principles to a much greater degree than most of American media’s own coverage will ever admit. I edited a terrific article by Sarah Betancourt for Paste Media about it back in 2017, as she noted that online, “trolls were mocking the reporters, and they’re not in the wrong.” Everyone taking this photo is practicing the antithesis of journalism, and there are few images that express the bankrupt value system of American media better than this enthusiastic production of fake news by a bunch of alleged journalists. Media sensationalism is so out of control on producing outright lies about what’s happening in Los Angeles that the Los Angeles Times today is out with an excellent article quoting “media outlets outside California” and detailing how “All of L.A. is not a ‘war zone.’ We separate facts from spin and disinformation amid immigration raids.”

In a sense, I’m almost appreciative of photos like the famed trash can fire in 2017, or articles like this by Politico with horrific framing just because of how honest it is about how much it admires Trump’s strongman routine and how it views protests against it as inherently illegitimate. There is no mystery as to what those photographers or this stenographer are trying to do and none of us have to pretend otherwise.

President Trump is leveraging his role as commander-in-chief in a much clearer and more urgent way than during his first term — whether that’s showing off the military in a parade or using it to quell protests.

[image or embed]

— Politico (@politico.com) June 11, 2025 at 6:19 AM

“Peaceful protest against elites misusing their power” is not a headline the mainstream media elites are interested in writing, and I have become convinced it is because the craven cynics who own media never ever want to shine a light on abuses of power that could trace back to them. They have set up an incentive structure for reporters to elevate the most sensationalist aspects of a protest, and then they have hired hairpieces with more resentment than sense like Jake Tapper to dutifully push their fake news narrative every night on TV.

While Tapper had plenty of time this week to repost attacks on the protests and the ratings for CNN’s viewing of Good Night, and Good Luck, there is nary a peep on his Twitter timeline about his colleague who was detained by police in Los Angeles for the crime of doing journalism. If you ever wanted proof that Jake Tapper isn’t a journalist, not standing in solidarity with journalists he works with is up towards the top of examples I’ve seen. In Tapper’s defense, his bosses at CNN didn’t see much of a need to cover this assault on journalism either, and the only mention of Jason Caroll being detained on their website is a video of it. Compare this to 2020, when CNN Correspondent Omar Jimenez was arrested on camera for the same crime of doing journalism, and CNN wrote up a sympathetic article about it, noting in the second paragraph that Jimenez told Wolf Blitzer that “his mother and grandmother were watching when he was arrested with his producer and his photojournalist.”

This is a helpful marker in how much the mainstream media has degraded since the George Floyd protests. Media elites now cannot even bring themselves to pretend to care about their colleagues lower on the org chart doing the kind of journalism that they falsely claim they do. Mainstream media has long been hostile to protest, but it seems like right now much of it has dropped the pretense that it needs to support people practicing their First Amendment rights. While this may seem shortsighted for a group of folks whose entire job is rooted in the First Amendment, stenographers like Tapper and his kind technically are not using their right to free speech, as they are just deadeyed parrots repeating what their powerful masters tell them to say.

America’s power centers have long despised protest, because they are the ultimate targets of it. Yes, the current immigration protests are directly aimed at Trump and ICE who are kidnapping children, but the implication of protesting Trump is you are also protesting the people supporting his authoritarianism. From tech moguls to big business to major media, the examples of pro-Trump actors in American power centers are endless, and the last thing that America’s cadre of TV hosts and stenographers cosplaying as journalists want is for Americans to extend the protests from Trump to those tacitly supporting him.