Beautiful Virgin Islands

Wednesday, Jun 04, 2025

The return of press complacency

The return of press complacency

Could the greatest threat to American journalism be journalists themselves?
I generally agree with Tony Soprano that "Remember when?" is the lowest form of conversation. But a few weeks away from Joe Biden's presidential inauguration it is hard not to get misty-eyed thinking about the early days of Donald Trump's administration.

I remember when Ben Carson's furniture purchases ranked highly among the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind. I remember when stories about cabinet members spending money on travel.

I remember when Trump was going to be impeached for tweeting about the NFL. I remember the White House briefing room when Sean Spicer told Glen Thrush to raise his hand and use his big boy voice (one of the administration's regular attacks upon the foundations of our vigorous and independent free press). I remember a time when Anderson Cooper's McCarthyite rants about the Russian menace were still shocking. I remember that there was a person called Scott Pruitt.

This was always going to be the upside of a Biden presidency. No more theatrical exchanges between White House officials and television journalists, no more over-the-top fact-checking chyrons — indeed, the whole blinkeredly tautological exercise of "fact checking" itself is likely to disappear, except in right-of-center publications.

Instead we can go back to ignoring how many people are deported and the conditions at border detention facilities. We can bomb the Middle East and stay in Afghanistan indefinitely. We can ignore real, indeed painfully obvious conflicts of interest involving the president's family and foreign powers. We can pretend that big tech is a disinterested vehicle for progress rather than a toxic sewer of something called "misinformation."

We might even let the '80s have their foreign policy back after all. All the existential threats to democracy will disappear like a bad dream because one septuagenarian opponent of single-payer health care is replacing another.

This is more or less exactly what CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta and a number of other journalists said in a recent interview with The Atlantic. Acosta, who has published a book with the apparently serious title The Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America, breathlessly insisted that Trump's relationship with the press has been a "nonstop national emergency." Another CNN reporter, Daniel Dale, informed readers that it "will not be a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week job to fact-check Biden." I'm sure it won't.

The extent to which these people are conscious of how ridiculous they sound is very much open to dispute. I am inclined to believe that most of what we think of as "media bias" is half conscious at best, a myopic inability to engage in what middle school teachers call "critical thinking," to place information in context, to observe well-defined professional norms, to do virtually any of the things that journalists apparently consider the hallmarks of their profession when they are not talking about Trump (or Willard Romney or George W. Bush before him, in a long line stretching back at least to Nixon).

A much more interesting question is which would be the greater indictment of the American media establishment: if they were honest buffoons who sincerely believed that Trump was a paid-up KGB operative who ran for office in order to convince Chinese billionaires to pay dues at Mar-a-Lago, or liars who only pretended to believe these things to make a living? The mind reels.

This is the most amusing thing of all of these people: projection. The greatest threat to American journalism is not the outgoing president who occasionally (and rarely without humor) mocks reporters for their self-aggrandizing behavior, but the journalists themselves, whose staggering incuriosity is rivaled only by their outsized sense of their own importance and their willingness to gaslight the American people. Slavish toward actual power, almost willfully amnesiac even about very recent history, functionally illiterate: They have only themselves to blame for the low esteem in which they are rightly held by everyone who does not share their class priorities.
Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
Global News Roundup: From Ukraine's strategic military strikes and Russia's demands and Tensions Escalate in Ukraine, to serious legal issues faced by Britons in Bali and Trump's media criticism, the latest developments highlight a turbulent landscape
Majority of French Voters View Macron's Presidency as a Failure
Hungary Partners with China to Boost Electric Vehicle Production
‘Vibe Coding’ Emerges as the New DIY Trend
AI Pioneer Yoshua Bengio Warns Models Can Deceive Users
Big Four Firms Rush to Create AI Auditing Systems
Musk’s xAI Pursues $113 Billion Valuation in New Share Sale
Walmart Increases Revenue Despite Shrinking Workforce
Hims & Hers Plans UK and EU Launch of Replica Obesity Drugs
Toyota to Acquire Supplier in $33 Billion Buyout
U.S. Reduces Military Presence in Syria
Trump Demands Iran End All Uranium Enrichment in Nuclear Talks
China Accuses US of Violating Trade Truce
Panama Port Owner Balances US-China Pressures
France Implements Nationwide Outdoor Smoking Ban to Protect Children
German Chancellor Merz Keeps Putin Guessing on Missile Strategy
Mandelson Criticizes UK's 'Fetish' for Abandoning EU Regulations
British Fishing Boat Owner Fined €30,000 by French Authorities
Dutch government falls as far-right leader Wilders quits coalition
Harvard Urges US to Unfreeze Funds for Public Health Research
Businessman Mauled by Lion at Luxury Namibian Lodge
Researchers Consider New Destinations Beyond the U.S.
53-Year-Old Doctor Claims Biological Age of 23
Trump Struggles to Secure Trade Deals With China and Europe
Russia to Return 6,000 Corpses Under Ukraine Prisoner Swap Deal
Microsoft Lays Off Hundreds More Amid Restructuring
Harvey Weinstein’s Publicist Embraces Notoriety
Macron and Meloni Seek Unity Despite Tensions
Trump Administration Accused of Obstructing Deportation Cases
Newark Mayor Sues Over Arrest at Immigration Facility
Center-Left Candidate Projected to Win South Korean Presidency
Trump’s Tariffs Predicted to Stall Global Economic Growth
South Korea’s President-Elect Expected to Take Softer Line on Trump and North Korea
Trump’s China Strategy Remains a Geopolitical Puzzle
Ukraine Executes Long-Range Drone Strikes on Russian Airbases
Conservative Karol Nawrocki wins Poland’s presidential election
Study Identifies Potential Radicalization Risk Among Over One Million Muslims in Germany
Good news: Annalena Baerbock Elected President of the UN General Assembly
Apple Appeals EU Law Over User Data Sharing Requirements
South Africa: "First Black Bank" Collapses after Being Looted by Owners
Poland will now withdraw from the EU migration pact after pro-Trump nationalist wins Election
"That's Disgusting, Don’t Say It Again": The Trump Joke That Made the President Boil
Trump Cancels NASA Nominee Over Democratic Donations
Paris Saint-Germain's Greatest Triumph Is Football’s Lowest Point
OnlyFans for Sale: From Lockdown Lifeline to Eight-Billion-Dollar Empire
Mayor’s Security Officer Implicated | Shocking New Details Emerge in NYC Kidnapping Case
Hegseth Warns of Potential Chinese Military Action Against Taiwan
OPEC+ Agrees to Increase Oil Output for Third Consecutive Month
Jamie Dimon Warns U.S. Bond Market Faces Pressure from Rising Debt
Turkey Detains Istanbul Officials Amid Anti-Corruption Crackdown
×