News organizations are using cowardly words to describe killing abroad, fascism at home — downplaying the danger to democracy.
There was a shocking and incredibly important story on the front page of the New York Times last week. As reported by an A-team of journalists including two Pulitzer Prize winners, the Times warned its readers that Donald Trump — if returned to the White House in 2025 — is grooming a new team of extremist government lawyers who would be more loyal to their Dear Leader than to the rule of law, and could help Trump install a brand of American fascism.
You say you didn’t hear anything about this? That’s not surprising. The editors at the Times made sure to present this major report in the blandest, most inoffensive way possible — staying true to the mantra in the nation’s most influential newsroom that the 2024 election shouldn’t be covered any differently, even when U.S. democracy is on the line.
I think it’s more that their incentives are perverse.
When you are ad supported it means you rely on clicks, views, and viewers. So you are incentivized to maximize views which in some cases means making people very angry and scared, sometimes means not showing them stuff they don’t want to see or hear, and sometimes means fabricating bullshit (fox News) because they real story wouldn’t get you as many clicks.
Us, as citizens and consumers of news, have abdicated our responsibility to be skeptical though. We’ve leaned on trustworthy news media over the years to be that filter, skeptic that’s impartial and honest. We trusted them to speak truth to power, dig into the nuance and explain it to us.
They aren’t doing that anymore and we haven’t shifted our approach to the news. A lot of people still just trust the news(the news they like) as if it’s still honest and impartial.
Another thing that shifted was the “don’t believe everything you read on the Internet” to people believing anything theyve read on the Internet.