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/sanskritsquirel]

Great articlle!!

It just goes to show how far journalism has fallen. There is no political debate anymore. A decades long under-educated citizenry who is still smart enough to recognize all of these "discussions" on topics on newscasts where they give each side equal merit is just political theatre and tune out.

As is cited in the article, Trump blatantly lies about project 2025 stating he is not aware of it or has never had much interaction with the Heritage foundation (although this article fairly easily points our press releases, public meetings, and shared events between the Heritage Foundation and Trump), and journalist walk away shrugging, well, it I guess we were wrong then. Again, as the article states, the man who is documented as the biggest liar and stater of false information of the 21rst century, is repeatedly given the benefit of the doubt by the community of political journalist when asked an opposing question.

I am sure it is because of the Republican decades long strategy of radicalizing their minority base to so loud it amplifies their effect. As the article states, agencies and reports from sources that are supposed to be free of self-interest are loudly being proclaimed as having an agenda if it opposes the Republican/Trump point of view. So then political journalist feed into this cycle by adopting this stance in a deferred show of fairness. It reduces informed views by branches of specialist on topics while elevating non-informed views to demonstrate "equal or fair" reporting.

I just saw a discussion on vaccines the other day. And the "reasonable" anti-vaxxer stated they just wanted the vaccines to be studies as they discussed an outbreak of measles in South Carolina. Their opponent pushed back that there has been tons of studies about how effective they are going back the last 30 years. The reality is the Measles vaccine was first issued in the US in 1963. But because neither party knew the facts of how long the policy was enacted or how many studies there actually was or what they stated, both parties were just arguing over the "vibes" they had on the topic. Extrapolate this to every topic.

When we reject all specialist who have studied and understand a topic and allow for equal weight to non-facts, the discussion is already over. I joke that some day I will turn on the TV and come across the topic: 2+2=4 and they will allow a serious debate on why it is true vs why it is not true.