We will have to do the job the Mainstream Media can not or will not

We have to be the serious people

This has been quite the week for media criticism.

Given our fast-paced news cycles, both mainstream media and social media seem to be chasing the latest shiny object. Trump said an outrageous thing on Truth Social! Ted Cruz drinks a beer! DeSantis campaign struggles! Polls show people unhappy with the economy! Voters concerned about Biden’s age!

Will Bunch started things off with a remarkable column on Sunday with a piece titled “Journalism fails miserably at explaining what is really happening to America”. After reflecting on the presentation of shared talking points that passed for a Republican Primary debate, he notes how many in establishment media treated it as just another night:

Some of the media’s worst avatars of what increasingly feels like hopeless democracy nostalgia are so-called never-Trump conservatives like Kathleen Parker, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist now with the Washington Post. It was Parker who famously predicted on the eve of the 2016 election that a victorious Trump would “dress up and behave at state dinners and be funny when called upon” and show contempt for Vladimir Putin, in the most notoriously wrong column of all time: “Calm down. We’ll be fine no matter who wins.” Rather than slowly back into the bushes, Homer Simpson-style, Parker is still pining for normalcy, declaring last week that Haley won the Milwaukee debate “poised, precise and prepared” — as if that mattered in the lion’s den of Fiserv Forum.

Of course, D.C. pundits like Parker or Baker are trained to talk to the folks on the stage and their high-priced consultants, not the mob that inexorably moves modern Republicanism away from believing in elections. I’ve been inside and outside of Trump rallies in Hershey and West Chester and Wildwood, and what I learned is that the only issue that matters isn’t an issue at all, but their contempt for the media outlets like CNN they believe look down on them and their savior. Of course, the salary of Baker or Parker or the CNN punditocracy depends on not understanding that. (emphasis added)

He concludes with these alarming words:

We need to hear from more experts on authoritarian movements and fewer pollsters and political strategists. We need journalists who’ll talk a lot less about who’s up or down and a lot more about the stakes — including Trump’s plans to dismantle the democratic norms that he calls “the administrative state,” to weaponize the criminal justice system, and to surrender the war against climate change — if the 45th president becomes the 47th. We need the media to see 2024 not as a traditional election, but as an effort to mobilize a mass movement that would undo democracy and splatter America with more blood like what was shed Saturday in Jacksonville. We need to understand that if the next 15 months remain the worst-covered election in U.S. history, it might also be the last.

Bunch’s outstanding article bounced around my social media feeds for three days. Others built on his argument. On Wednesday, Dan Froomkin, writer of the excellent Press Watch, interviewed a number of other media analysts¹ via email and compiled his results. His piece is titled, “A desperate appeal to newsroom leaders on the eve of a chaos election.”

Froomkin organizes his piece around five themes: picking the right frame, focusing on the stakes, setting the agenda, focusing on the greatest threats, and the importance of context. Each of these would be a great protection against the chase-the-lastest-thing coverage. In opening the “not the odds but the stakes” section, he writes:

There was overwhelming agreement among the people I surveyed that newsroom leaders should cut back on horse race coverage in favor of news stories about how the different candidates and parties would govern. (emphasis added)

He quotes Joanne Lipman with regard to providing context:

Journalists cover EVERY story through the lens of left vs right, which means news consumers don’t actually get real information about the issues. We are woefully ill-informed on basic topics.

He shares Parker Malloy’s perspective:

You can do the quirky stories and palace intrigue stuff, you can talk about polling. You can absolutely do those things. But that needs to be secondary to helping readers understand what candidates believe, what they would do if elected, and what those policies would actually mean to the public.

There’s much more in his piece that I loved. Froomkin and his colleagues provide an excellent diagnosis of problems with contemporary media coverage, but also give concrete strategies on what ought to be done.

The need to focus on governing strategy rather than horse-race coverage and debate zingers becomes especially clear when covering Vivek Ramaswamy. Margaret Sullivan noted how VR was covered by the major press:

The Washington Post put him up high in its “winners” column, trailing only behind Donald Trump, who notably wasn’t even there. (Choosing not to enter this particular clown car showed some uncharacteristic good sense on the former president’s part.)

The New York Times analyzed the situation under a glowing headline “How Vivek Ramaswamy Broke Through: Big Swings With a Smile”, with emphasis on his style: “unchecked confidence and insults”.

The problem can be seen right there in that last line. Style was important. But what he actually said got a pass. On Meet The Press on Sunday, Chuck Todd pushed VR on the question of whether Mike Pence had done the right thing in certifying the 2020 election on January 6th.² VR launched into some elaborate claim about how he would have taken advantage of the moment to force the Congress to pass national voter ID, paper ballots, and one-day voting. While Chuck Todd was skeptical of the claim, he let VR filibuster his answer until time expired and he had to move on to the next topic.

As I pointed out on X in response to the clip, the follow questions were obvious: Why would the Congress agree? What about the fact that elections happen at the state and not the federal level? Wouldn’t there be immediate lawsuits? And even if everyone loved the idea (spoiler, they wouldn’t), how could it be done in the two weeks remaining until Biden’s inauguration? I’ve not seen anybody in the mainstream media ask these questions this week.

The same kinds of questions can be asked about VR’s self-assured arguments about a host of other things. How exactly would he go about reducing the federal government by 50-75% while still providing necessary services?³ Who will write the civics tests he wants 18-25 year olds to take before they can vote and how would they be administered?⁴ Just today, he called it common sense that we would ban social media for those under 15. How does this get enforced? What about parents’ rights as opposed to draconian government overreach?

To be fair, it’s not just VR. Both Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley have said that they would use the military to hunt down drug cartels outside the United States. DeSantis said he would have drug dealers shot on sight (something he extended to post-Idalia looters). On what authority would they do such things? What about existing treaties protecting national sovereignty? And wouldn’t the Organization of American States require all Central and South American countries to defend whichever territory we breached?

David French had an opinion piece in yesterday’s New York Times raising many of these same questions about Ramaswamy. To my list, he adds VR’s claims that slavery ended due to second amendment protections, that he’d end the Ukraine war at current border levels, and that he’d only temporarily support Taiwan.

To quote Logan Roy, “These are not serious people”.

French concludes his piece like this:

The bottom line is this: When a political class still broadly believes in policing dishonesty, the nation can manage the negative effects of widespread civic ignorance. When the political class corrects itself, the people will tend to follow. But when key members of the political class abandon any pretense of knowledge or truth, a poorly informed public is simply unequipped to hold them to account.

This morning as I was pondering the piece you’re reading, I got Dan Pfeiffer’s Message Box SubStack. As it happens, Dan was celebrating the three year anniversary of his newsletter. After acknowledging the struggles of moving beyond the talking points and flashy things I’ve described above, he repeats the charge he gave three years ago.

For the last several years, I have been obsessing over a version of politics that leverages every supporter with a smartphone and a social presence and turns them into messengers who persuade voters and shift the political conversation to the left. This can only be accomplished if we treat our volunteers like political pros and offer them sophisticated political analysis, strategic advice, and specific guidance on how to communicate with the people in their personal networks. Message Box is intended to be a strategy memo for the masses whether you are running for office, working on a campaign, or trying to win this election one voter at a time on Facebook or via text.

I was impressed with Pfeiffer’s point from 2020. It’s part of why I started this newsletter. I needed a way to do my own small piece in support of democracy.

While I do wish that the modern press was more analytical on key issues of the day,⁵ I realize that the kind of deft response to positions like Ramaswamy’s run counter to the corporate and organizational dynamics of media. There are stories to be written and deadlines to meet. There are editors and corporate executives who have certain levels of conflict avoidance.⁶ Television interviews have to wrap before the next commercial break and can’t be too antagonistic or the guest may not accept a booking next time.⁷

None of those limitations exist for you and me. We have social media tools where we can ask the hard questions and correct the record. We have friends that we see over coffee or brunch and can share our concerns. We don’t have to throw around manichean terms like evil, fascist, totalitarian, or theocrat.

All we have to is be willing to explore the central questions: How would this work? Could the candidate make that happen if elected? Who would be impacted if they did?

As I’ve written before, we shouldn’t get caught up in the dynamics of the campaign logistics and posturing⁸ because the real issue for democracy is not the upcoming election but what will happen when the current candidate become governing officials.

If the candidates and the media can’t be serious people, we’ll have to be.

1. I already follow many of these critics. My list incudes, Bunch, Froomkin, Jay Rosen, Margaret Sullivan, James Fallows, Norm Ornstein, Brian Stelter, and Eric Wemple

2. A rare pushback from Todd.

3. I know that “government waste, fraud, and abuse” is the favorite claim of those seeking office (until they learn how things really work) but that’s just a ridiculous level of downsizing.

4. And isn’t this the very definition of an unconstitutional literacy test?

5. Shoutout to Philip Bump who has been doing a wonderful job of this in the Washington Post

6. Nearly 30 years later, James Fallow’s Breaking the News is still an excellent resource.

7. Although in my dreams, I imagine the interviewer telling the producer, “we’re staying here through this commercial break and we’re bumping the C-block guest”.

8. Although DeSantis’ campaign is textbook bad.