This week, I look at what media coverage of 2024 would look like if the media stopped normalizing the MAGA GOP, pick the person of the week and share what I’m checking off my bucket list.
The fawning media reaction (Got more time! Stood out! Bump in the polls!) to the debate performance of Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy — a 9/11-, election- and climate change-denier who likened prominent Black leaders to the KKK wizards — suggests the media learned very little from the 2016 campaign and the Donald Trump presidency. The mainstream political press persists in treating debates as political games (Winners! Losers!) as the participants spout propaganda and defend the four-times-indicted and anti-democratic former president. (Media critic Margaret Sullivan smartly asked in the Guardian: “How can there be ‘winners’ in yet another milestone on the way to fascism?”)
The journalistic malpractice continued after the debate with hours of breathless coverage awaiting Trump’s arrival at the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta. Then came 24/7 speculation as to whether Trump’s menacing mug shot would help or hurt him.
This sort of coverages shocks but does not surprise. The media has whistled past the graveyard of democracy for eight years. You want to ask: Can’t they recognize this is not simply another election to be gamified in pursuit of clicks and audience ratings?
In the Philadelphia Inquirer, columnist Will Bunch summed up the current dismal state of affairs:
Print, online and cable news could promote political literacy, helping voters understand how authoritarian movements cut deals with big business and religious fundamentalists to secure power. Instead of just reporting that Trump called the media or the judiciary biased, reporters should acknowledge that strongmen and their apologists degrade professional ethics — to discredit the truth.
Interviewers could routinely grill all Republicans about their party’s adherence to the “big lie,” demonization of law enforcement and support for congressional attempts to interfere with prosecution. And the media could seriously investigate how so many Americans have suspended logic, decency and devotion to the rule of law just as others around the world have fallen under the sway of demagogic leaders — rather than amplify their prejudices, conspiracies and anger. (Persisting to cast MAGA supporters as down-and-out working-class folks is misleading and condescending, and ignores the statistically significant correlation between Trump support and views on supposed persecution of White people, gender roles and Christian nationalism.) Lastly, it could stop featuring unenlightening and premature polling.
It is not as though journalists are unfamiliar with serious analysis. The media manages to expose elected foreign leaders who turn to authoritarian tactics (e.g., India’s Narendra Modi and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan). They figure out how to investigate right-wing nationalistic parties in Europe that spout racist tropes and cozy up to the Russians. Nevertheless, too few are willing to engage in exacting, sober journalism when it comes to domestic political coverage.
Treating the GOP like an ordinary party — and the 2024 election like a run-of-the-mill race — allows the media to cling to false equivalencies and feigned neutrality. However, as long as the mainstream media practices business-as-usual journalism, millions of voters will remain oblivious to the dire state of American democracy. And worse, Trump and his party will benefit from the bizarre insistence on treating neo-fascists and their apologists like normal politicians.
What caught my eye
The fawning media reaction (Got more time! Stood out! Bump in the polls!) to the debate performance of Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy — a 9/11-, election- and climate change-denier who likened prominent Black leaders to the KKK wizards — suggests the media learned very little from the 2016 campaign and the Donald Trump presidency. The mainstream political press persists in treating debates as political games (Winners! Losers!) as the participants spout propaganda and defend the four-times-indicted and anti-democratic former president. (Media critic Margaret Sullivan smartly asked in the Guardian: “How can there be ‘winners’ in yet another milestone on the way to fascism?”)
The journalistic malpractice continued after the debate with hours of breathless coverage awaiting Trump’s arrival at the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta. Then came 24/7 speculation as to whether Trump’s menacing mug shot would help or hurt him.
This sort of coverages shocks but does not surprise. The media has whistled past the graveyard of democracy for eight years. You want to ask: Can’t they recognize this is not simply another election to be gamified in pursuit of clicks and audience ratings?
In the Philadelphia Inquirer, columnist Will Bunch summed up the current dismal state of affairs:
What would responsible media look like? The media could educate the public and defend democracy. Serious news outlets could examine Trump’s sickening similarity to strongmen such as Silvio Berlusconi, Viktor Orban and Benito Mussolini. (And yet, rarely, do we get discussions about how Trump’s abusive treatment of women, toxic masculinity and misogyny perfectly fit within the tradition of fascist leaders from Mussolini to Berlusconi to Moammar Gaddafi.) Reports could discuss how the MAGA movement tracks previous fascist movements that invariably deify a leader and revel in a cult of personality. The media could explain how the GOP has morphed into an anti-democratic party that deploys violence and appeals to white nationalism and nostalgia.
Print, online and cable news could promote political literacy, helping voters understand how authoritarian movements cut deals with big business and religious fundamentalists to secure power. Instead of just reporting that Trump called the media or the judiciary biased, reporters should acknowledge that strongmen and their apologists degrade professional ethics — to discredit the truth.
Interviewers could routinely grill all Republicans about their party’s adherence to the “big lie,” demonization of law enforcement and support for congressional attempts to interfere with prosecution. And the media could seriously investigate how so many Americans have suspended logic, decency and devotion to the rule of law just as others around the world have fallen under the sway of demagogic leaders — rather than amplify their prejudices, conspiracies and anger. (Persisting to cast MAGA supporters as down-and-out working-class folks is misleading and condescending, and ignores the statistically significant correlation between Trump support and views on supposed persecution of White people, gender roles and Christian nationalism.) Lastly, it could stop featuring unenlightening and premature polling.
It is not as though journalists are unfamiliar with serious analysis. The media manages to expose elected foreign leaders who turn to authoritarian tactics (e.g., India’s Narendra Modi and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan). They figure out how to investigate right-wing nationalistic parties in Europe that spout racist tropes and cozy up to the Russians. Nevertheless, too few are willing to engage in exacting, sober journalism when it comes to domestic political coverage.
Treating the GOP like an ordinary party — and the 2024 election like a run-of-the-mill race — allows the media to cling to false equivalencies and feigned neutrality. However, as long as the mainstream media practices business-as-usual journalism, millions of voters will remain oblivious to the dire state of American democracy. And worse, Trump and his party will benefit from the bizarre insistence on treating neo-fascists and their apologists like normal politicians.
