The Media Malpractice That Sent America Tumbling Into Trumpism

[Nevilledog]

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

No paywall link
https://archive.li/CZpM7

We are now one year into Donald Trump’s second term, and something strange is happening in political media. A lot of people who spent years insisting that the so-called “alarmists” were being hysterical have started, tentatively, to admit that maybe they got it wrong.

Last April, David Brooks published a long essay in The Atlantic titled “I Should Have Seen This Coming,” in which he acknowledged that he’d underestimated how much conservatism had become pure anti-liberal reaction. Jon Stewart, who spent the early weeks of the second Trump administration chiding liberals for being too quick to use the word “fascism,” eventually conceded on air: “I did not think we would get this authoritarian this fast. I really didn’t. I’m sorry. Who could’ve known? Maybe if somebody out there had yelled at me on Bluesky about this, I would have known. But no one did. Except every day. In all caps.”

Political scientist Corey Robin, who had spent years dismissing those who called MAGA fascist, admitted on an October podcast: “I was skeptical coming into this second administration that they would be able to wield the kind of power that people feared they would wield. I have since turned out to be wrong.”

And then there are the journalists who covered the 2024 campaign, who are now looking back at their own work with what might charitably be called discomfort. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, especially after listening to a recent podcast that crystallized something for me.

*snip*



This quote by the recently deceased Carlos Hernandez says it all:

[MN2theMax]

1. Excellent and also maddening

From the article:

There’s a cost to this.
Project 2025 was almost inconceivably unpopular with the American public. An NBC News poll from September 2024 found that 57 percent of registered voters viewed the plan negatively. Just 4 percent viewed it positively. Four percent. If voters had understood that Trump intended to implement this agenda, that knowledge might have mattered. Instead, the press kept telling them it was complicated. Trump says he has nothing to do with it. Critics say he does. Who can really know? The effect was to launder Trump’s lie into a legitimate difference of opinion, transforming a question with a clear answer into a murky dispute that voters would have to sort out for themselves.

*highlighting added by me.

What is not addressed in the article is, why is (mainstream) press still doing this?

[WmChris]

2. Unfortunately

I think voters did know what what was going on and supported it until it started hurting them. I think there is a lot of buyer's remorse out there right now.

[LuvLoogie]

3. Except that everyone who voted for trump will vote for Vance

and will think they have evolved.

[hedda_foil]

4. TNR nails it. It may be for the best that legacy media is in its death throes.

The old rules haven't applied since November 2000. Of was it 1963?