Finally. A Media Critic Weighs In That the Press Needs To Cover the Looming Threat To Democracy. This Isn’t Just Another Partisan Bash

I must say this gives me hope. If there has been an elephant in the room in the run up to this election, it is the la de da, lackadaisical attitude that Election 2022 is like Election 2020 or like Election 2018, so on and so forth. No. Each election since 2016 has been very different. 2016 was the ice water bath at 4:00 a.m., 2018 was “thank God, we got out the vote” 2020 was as expected in many ways, but for the insane coda, with Trump siccing his troops on Washington. But 2022, is something altogether unique. In 2022 democracy itself is on the ballot? Why? Because we can’t tolerate the further fulmination of the unprovable and patently mad conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was stolen. This has to stop.

Now the conspiracy mill is starting up again to make 2022 the sequel to 2020. This is destroying our way of life. So why is this not a news story? It not only beats the hell out of me but Dan Froomkin, who is a media critic, has exactly the same concerns. He believes, as I do, that the media has to change the way they cover politics. And he spoke to a number of other journalists and they held forth their perspectives on why journalists need to change the game. Press Watch:

It’s been an infuriating mystery to me for a long time now: Why aren’t mainstream political journalists taking a more aggressive approach to explaining the threat to democracy? Especially with such a big step potentially coming next week?

The threat is awfully clear. I think it’s also one hell of a news story. So why are they just covering it like another partisan fight?

Here at Press Watch, I have often speculated that it’s because of the dictums of hidebound editors who feel they should remain above the fray. My thinking was that if those editors just freed reporters of the obligation to “both-sides” every political issue, they would spring into action.

But what if most of the people in those newsrooms actually don’t feel that the threat to democracy is real? What if they’re actually not alarmed?

What if they look out at the political sphere — increasingly filled with election-denial, voter suppression, political violence, unaccountability to the law, enthusiastic abuse of public power to punish enemies — and think: Eh, it’ll blow over, it doesn’t affect me?

It affects all of us. And people in the press, who have a voice and who have a platform, have what I consider an affirmative duty to warn people of what is happening. As I’ve quoted before, from Journalism 101:

The journalist’s job is to find out what is true with respect to the threat against democracy and write about it.

The summit takes as a given that, in the face of “anti-democratic forces,” aiming to preserve balance is “an unworkable approach and a crisis for our profession and our country.”

Hannah-Jones’s tweet suggests that the lack of diversity in our top newsrooms – often acknowledged as a representation problem, and as creating a blind spot about the role of race and racism in politics – also creates a sense of false comfort about our democracy.

O’Brien gave Ifill an amen. “Yes. Every time somebody tells me ‘this is not who we are’ or ‘I’m absolutely shocked by this!’ I feel like maybe they should read a book about American history,” she wrote.

Matthew Sheffield, a formerly right-wing journalist who now works for the left-wing Young Turks online news show, raised an issue related to the urban, upper-class backgrounds of so many elite journalists: “I think the root of this issue is that the vast majority of journos never had any real contact w the religion-based authoritarianism which took total control of the GOP after the Tea Party. It’s still not real to them,” he wrote.

Press Watch is devoted to the principle that in the current political climate, journalists need to change the rules of the game. That’s never been more clear, as this brain trust made clear.

“When the two major political parties were at least in agreement that democracy should be protected it was easier,” Ifill wrote. “Once Trump erased the lines & the Republican Party abandoned allegiance to democracy, it forced a set of questions many journalists are ill-equipped to answer.”

Rosen summarized some of his conclusions: “I agree. Their practices ran on a mental picture of two roughly similar parties with different ideologies that fought it out during elections to see who could rouse more voters to their side. As the GOP abandoned its allegiance to democracy, this consensus understanding gave way,” he wrote:

“When the ‘don’t take sides’ commandment meets a lopsided story like, ‘we have a two-party system and one of the two has turned anti-democratic,’ people in newsrooms hesitate because they are confronted by what feels like a conflict in their code: stay balanced vs. say what is,” he continued.

The real-life result is garbage like a front-page New York Times story I wrote about last week, in which the author wrote that “just what is threatening democracy depends on who you talk to.” Or, like an execrable Washington Post article on Monday claiming that “people on both sides of the partisan split” share the “hope that the country can be put back together again.”

Greg Sargent agreed with Rosen and, perhaps unwittingly, perfectly described the difference between his reported opinion column for the Washington Post, which is unflinching in its descriptions of the dangers we face, and the work of his colleagues on the news side.

“The idea that ‘one party is abandoning democracy and the other isn’t’ requires journos to arrive at a baseline conviction on what democratic values are and why they matter, and that’s not something that was expected of them before,” Sargent wrote.

Ifill’s comments made me wonder if maybe the newsroom poohbahs really think that all of us who are worried about the threat to democracy are just being shrill and hysterical. That would be crazy, but also very true to type.

Anybody who thinks that people worrying about the clear and obvious threat to democracy is paranoid does not belong in a newsroom. Read Froomkin’s entire article. It’s worth the time. I personally am elated to find any evidence that this is being discussed. I expect to see a lot of changes in media in the very near future.

What happens next week is going to be key. If we do have a blue tsunami, or even just a good showing, a better showing than is currently indicated by the aggregated polls designed to produce nail biting and instill insecurity, then a large statement will be made. It will be a statement similar to the one made in 2016 when we all got the 4:00 a.m. ice water bath after Hillary Clinton conceded the election. What did we get wrong? And how we get it so far wrong?

And in this case, in 2022? I think the answer is that the system of covering politics is way out of date. The institution of media itself needs an overhaul, starting with reporting polls and explaining them for what they are and are not. I think that is the message that we’ll take away after the ballots are all counted.

And media is already in the process of beginning an overhaul. The networks are making changes. Jake Tapper’s prime time show is off of CNN and Shepard Smith is off CNBC in the near future. On the broadcast end of journalism, which is a world unto itself, ratings are the big deal. And the new head of CNN has made it clear that he doesn’t want CNN to have a partisan flavor, rather he wants to be the McDonald’s of news and have a massive amount of traffic. We’ll see what goes on over there as that quest continues.

But for print journalism, it’s high time to get accountable. Print journalism has always been the standard bearer for the profession. That’s where the changes need to start.

The first part of implementing any change is realizing that a change is needed. It looks like finally that step has been taken. Hallelujah.

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