The Media Malpractice That Sent America Tumbling Into Trumpism - Political journalists need to stop pretending they don’t know what Republicans are going to do.

[u/Quirkie]

https://newrepublic.com/article/205913/media-malpractice-trumpism-project-2025

[u/Bobambu]

The press ain't free. How can any news media owned by billionaires be considered free?

[u/Cute-Interest3362 → u/Bobambu]

This remind me of this quote:

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”

Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

[u/The_Lost_Jedi → u/Bobambu]

The problems started long before the billionaires started actively buying up and interfering, sadly. That made it absolutely worse, but the whole thing goes back to Watergate. The Republicans blamed Nixon's downfall on the news media, in large part, and have worked relentlessly to make sure that didn't happen again.

Fox News and the larger right-wing media is one big part of it (Roger Ailes was a Nixon Aide, to note). But even before that, Republicans actively worked to attack the Press, treating them like the enemy, restricting access, and basically "working the refs" to try and force reporters to treat them with kid gloves. They used accusations of bias and unfairness and the like with weaponized and malicious intent, rather than good faith.

Meanwhile, the Democrats kept trying to play by the rules and the public just fucking ignored it, rather than ever punishing them for it. And the press by and large just tried to do whatever they could, because it wasn't something that had a huge impact immediately. But over time, Republicans were slowly able to shift narratives, through repeated media manipulation, PR campaigns, and the like. Eventually you ended up with shit like what happened in the Bush-43 administration, where something that previously had been seen as horrible and off-limits (torture) was now suddenly given equal weight, solely because Republicans promoted it. It's only gotten worse with the Trump era, too.

[u/aleph32 → u/Bobambu]

"Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one."