Beautiful Virgin Islands

Wednesday, Jun 25, 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
Explosions Rock Doha as Iranian Missiles Target Qatar
“You Have 12 Hours to Flee”: Israeli Threat Campaign Targets Surviving Iranian Officials
Macron and Merz: Europe must arm itself in an unstable world
Germany and Italy Under Pressure to Repatriate $245bn of Gold from US Vaults
Airlines Evaluate Flight Cancellations Amid Escalating US-Iran Tensions
Starmer Invites Innovators to Join Government Talent Scheme
UK Economy’s Strong Opening Quarter Shows Signs of Cooling
Harrods Seeks Court Order to Secure Al Fayed Estate for Victims
BA and Singapore Airlines Cancel Dubai Flights Amid Middle East Tensions
Trump Faces Backlash from MAGA Base Over Iran Strikes
Meta Bets $14 B on Alexandr Wang to Drive AI Ambitions
WATCH: Israeli forces show the aftermath of a massive airstrike at Iran's Isfahan nuclear site
FedEx Founder Fred Smith, ‘Heart and Soul’ of the Company, Dies at 80
Chinese Factories Shift Away from U.S. Amid Trump‑Era Tariffs
Pimco Seizes Opportunity in Japan’s Dislocated Bond Market
Labubu Doll Drives Pop Mart to Status as China’s Most Valuable Toy Maker
Global Coal Demand Defies Paris Accord Goals
We have new information and breaking details to share about what is shaping up to be a historic air campaign tonight
Six Massive Bombs Dropped on Fordow; Trump: 'A Historic Moment for the U.S., Israel, and the World'
Fordow: Deeply Buried Iranian Enrichment Site in U.S.–Israel Crosshairs
United States Conducts Precision Strikes on Iran’s Nuclear Sites
US strikes Iran nuclear sites, Trump says
Pakistan to nominate Trump for Nobel Peace Prize.
BBC Demands Perplexity AI Immediately Stop Using Its Content
Telegram Founder: I Will Leave My Fortune to Over 100 of My Children
Political Turmoil Resurfaces in Belgium Amid Economic Concerns
Fed policymakers divided on timing of interest rate cuts
Trump signals imminent agreement with Harvard University
Inheritance tax referendum alarms Swiss billionaire community
Japan cancels bilateral security meeting amid US defence demands
AI skeptic Emily Bender warns that ‘the emperor has no clothes’
Israel Confirms Assassination of Quds Force Commander in Tehran
16 Billion Login Credentials Leaked in Unprecedented Cybersecurity Breach
Senate hearing on who was 'really running' Biden White House kicks off
Iranian Military Officers Reportedly Seek Contact with Reza Pahlavi, Signal Intent to Defect
FBI and Senate Investigate Allegations of Chinese Plot to Influence the 2020 Election in Biden’s Favor Using Fake U.S. Driver’s Licenses
Vietnam Emerges as Luxury Yacht Destination for Ultra‑Rich
Plans to Sell Dutch Embassy in Bangkok Face Local Opposition
China's Iranian Oil Imports Face Disruption Amid Escalating Middle East Tensions
Trump's $5 Million 'Trump Card' Visa Program Draws Nearly 70,000 Applicants
DGCA Finds No Major Safety Concerns in Air India's Boeing 787 Fleet
Airlines Reroute Flights Amid Expanding Middle East Conflict Zones
Elon Musk's xAI Seeks $9.3 Billion in Funding Amid AI Expansion
Trump Demands Iran's Unconditional Surrender Amid Escalating Conflict
Israeli Airstrike Targets Iranian State TV in Central Tehran
President Trump is leaving the G7 summit early and has ordered the National Security Council to the Situation Room
Taiwan Imposes Export Ban on Chips to Huawei and SMIC
Israel has just announced plans to strike Tehran again, and in response, Trump has urged people to evacuate
Netanyahu Signals Potential Regime Change in Iran
Juncker Criticizes EU Inaction on Trump Tariffs
×