The biases of the professional classes replicate themselves, and we find figures as horrified and baffled by the progressive left as they are by the reactionary right.
Journalism was supposed to save us. They promised. After the election of Donald Trump, which the good gentlemen and ladies of journalism assisted in facilitating, much was made of the ability of the fourth estate to soften the blow, to shorten the reign of corruption, to protect the public from the madman in the White House. It hasn’t really worked out that way, and the increasingly unhinged rhetoric of the opinion-havers and the public faces of news networks does little to restore our faith.
The media has come under fire for its role in helping President Trump make his way to the highest office in the land – from making too much of Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, to giving Trump untold hours of free publicity by broadcasting his every word and deed, to fundamentally misunderstanding their own country and what the people who live between New York and Los Angeles might want or need.
Yet, for the most part, the media did not take its failure to foresee or prevent the results of the 2016 election as a cue to pause, assess what it has been doing wrong, and realign itself and its mission in response to the hard lessons it has learned.
Instead, the media rebranded, like an oil company recently discovered to be dumping toxic sludge down the throats of sea turtles. It announced it would be the bulwark against Trump and all of his cronies, the last line of protection between us and fascism. Ta-da. It created whole ad campaigns around Trump’s hatred for the press. If he hates us, that must mean we’re good, right? Right?
Like those companies, it never stopped its sludge dumping, just changed the name under which it committed its sea turtle murder. No one lost their job for assuring the country of the impossibility of Hillary Clinton losing the election. No pundits had to apologize for never once stepping inside a red state before pontificating about the state of things in Trump country. The New York Times relied on the same six “swing voters” to provide commentary whenever the paper of record decided it need to prove it was in touch with the common people.
Billionaires buying newspapers also became something of a trend, like fidget spinners or insulin rationing due to a lack of comprehensive health insurance – either because these billionaires seek to make themselves look philanthropic, or because they want to control the coverage of their financial goings-on, or both. (Democracy dies in darkness, Mr Bezos? Yeah, well, so do workers on your warehouse floors.)
Yes, the media made a few cosmetic changes to prove they understood the diversity of thought across this nation. The New York Times, for example, decided it lacked the conservative voices that could explain the populist rightward tilt the electorate took, so the paper hired man-of-the-people Bret Stephens – son of a corporate scion, graduate of the University of Chicago and the London School of Economics – as a columnist. You know, someone who could really give some insight into the kind of opinions circulating at the Beloit, Kansas, diner at harvest time. Other publications followed suit, fawning over anyone who might have accidentally found themselves briefly living in a conservative state before their inevitable elevation to the elite university system, like the Yale graduate/Appalachia expert/venture capitalist JD Vance, despite the multitude of critics who say his theories about the white working class are naive at best.
Journalism has become a well-gate-kept little bubble, if bubbles were created out of ignorance and contempt for what lay outside of them instead of just soap. And unlike soap bubbles, so easily pricked and burst, the walls of the ideological bubbles of our professional class are nearly impenetrable.
[ed. See also: The Populist Pundits (Jacobin), and 'A Wake Up Moment for the American Power Establishment' (Common Dreams).]
Journalism was supposed to save us. They promised. After the election of Donald Trump, which the good gentlemen and ladies of journalism assisted in facilitating, much was made of the ability of the fourth estate to soften the blow, to shorten the reign of corruption, to protect the public from the madman in the White House. It hasn’t really worked out that way, and the increasingly unhinged rhetoric of the opinion-havers and the public faces of news networks does little to restore our faith.
The media has come under fire for its role in helping President Trump make his way to the highest office in the land – from making too much of Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, to giving Trump untold hours of free publicity by broadcasting his every word and deed, to fundamentally misunderstanding their own country and what the people who live between New York and Los Angeles might want or need.
Yet, for the most part, the media did not take its failure to foresee or prevent the results of the 2016 election as a cue to pause, assess what it has been doing wrong, and realign itself and its mission in response to the hard lessons it has learned.Instead, the media rebranded, like an oil company recently discovered to be dumping toxic sludge down the throats of sea turtles. It announced it would be the bulwark against Trump and all of his cronies, the last line of protection between us and fascism. Ta-da. It created whole ad campaigns around Trump’s hatred for the press. If he hates us, that must mean we’re good, right? Right?
Like those companies, it never stopped its sludge dumping, just changed the name under which it committed its sea turtle murder. No one lost their job for assuring the country of the impossibility of Hillary Clinton losing the election. No pundits had to apologize for never once stepping inside a red state before pontificating about the state of things in Trump country. The New York Times relied on the same six “swing voters” to provide commentary whenever the paper of record decided it need to prove it was in touch with the common people.
Billionaires buying newspapers also became something of a trend, like fidget spinners or insulin rationing due to a lack of comprehensive health insurance – either because these billionaires seek to make themselves look philanthropic, or because they want to control the coverage of their financial goings-on, or both. (Democracy dies in darkness, Mr Bezos? Yeah, well, so do workers on your warehouse floors.)
Yes, the media made a few cosmetic changes to prove they understood the diversity of thought across this nation. The New York Times, for example, decided it lacked the conservative voices that could explain the populist rightward tilt the electorate took, so the paper hired man-of-the-people Bret Stephens – son of a corporate scion, graduate of the University of Chicago and the London School of Economics – as a columnist. You know, someone who could really give some insight into the kind of opinions circulating at the Beloit, Kansas, diner at harvest time. Other publications followed suit, fawning over anyone who might have accidentally found themselves briefly living in a conservative state before their inevitable elevation to the elite university system, like the Yale graduate/Appalachia expert/venture capitalist JD Vance, despite the multitude of critics who say his theories about the white working class are naive at best.
Journalism has become a well-gate-kept little bubble, if bubbles were created out of ignorance and contempt for what lay outside of them instead of just soap. And unlike soap bubbles, so easily pricked and burst, the walls of the ideological bubbles of our professional class are nearly impenetrable.
by Jessa Crispin, The Guardian | Read more:
Image: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images[ed. See also: The Populist Pundits (Jacobin), and 'A Wake Up Moment for the American Power Establishment' (Common Dreams).]
