In his new, much-talked-about Atlantic essay, George Packer contends that journalists “will have a special challenge” in the era of President-elect Donald Trump. “We’re living,” he writes, “in a world where facts instantly perish upon contact with human minds.”
For those unfamiliar with Packer’s work, he’s a celebrated author of numerous books, including one that purports to tell the story of America’s “unwinding.” Packer, a cultural anthropologist and psychiatrist, wraps the usual milquetoast conventional leftist wisdom in the kind of melodramatic prose that impresses well-heeled progressives.
But perhaps the most corrosive problem with contemporary journalism is that it acts as if Trump poses a uniquely dangerous threat to the country, necessitating reporters to drop many of their ethical standards to engage in a defense of “democracy.”
Contra Packer’s contention, “human minds” — the best minds around, I say — are no more inclined to dismiss facts today than they were in the past. Conspiracizing has always been a part of American politics. The Atlantic, for instance, just hired a writer who contends there’s a high probability that Trump was recruited by the KGB in the late 1980s and remains a Russian asset. It is what it is.
The critical difference is that these days, even genuinely curious people can no longer trust the Fourth Estate to help them discern what is and isn’t real. Rather than meeting the challenges of the social media age with more careful, professional, ethical, broad-minded journalism, big media have gone in a different direction, destroying trust in the entire institution.
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In his newsletter the other day, which links to Packer’s piece, CNN’s navel-gazing media reporter, Brian Selzer, laments the lack of coverage of sexual assault allegations against Trump’s defense secretary nominee, Pete Hegseth, the dominant topic on the Left this week.
It’s true, most Republicans don’t really care — and CNN and others have given them a great excuse not to care. Many of them remember the wall-to-wall coverage of preposterous allegations against Brett Kavanaugh. It was a partisan witch hunt that was not only coordinated to stop an originalist’s elevation to the Supreme Court but to embarrass and destroy his credibility should he succeed. And I’m not even talking about the uncorroborated accusations of Christine Blasey Ford, who could not even offer a time or place for the alleged assault against her. I’m talking about the slew of preposterous allegations that followed, including gang rape, that were given platforms across legacy media. For many conservatives, even centrist ones, that was a radicalizing event.
Virtually every conspiracy theory and evidence-free allegation will get a hearing in the legacy media, just as long as it’s aimed at the right person. And, indeed, the effort to delegitimize the court continues with conspiracies about Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
Now, I’ve never met Hegseth and have no clue what he’s really like. But I do know that NBC News, in a piece this week accusing the former Fox News host of being drunk at work, allowed seven former Fox News employees to be anonymous but didn’t bother reaching out to a single of his co-hosts at the network. One suspects reporters avoided speaking to close coworkers because the quotes would have complicated the partisan impact, which makes the entire story suspect.
That’s just a small example of what is constantly going on these days.
Packer only alludes to this unprofessionalism, suggesting that “instead of chasing phantoms on social media, journalists would make better use of our dwindling resources, and perhaps regain some of the public’s trust, by doing what we’ve done in every age: expose the lies and graft of oligarchs and plutocrats, and tell the stories of people who can’t speak for themselves.”
What about exposing the social science quackery of the academic “expert” class, the lies of the public health official, the misdeeds of the media, the antisemitism and anti-Americanism of higher education, and the authoritarianism of the state, the most powerful and dangerous entity of all?
We need to report on corporate malfeasances, but for the 20 years I’ve been in journalism, and perhaps going back to Watergate, reporters have seen themselves as crusaders in the fight against those on the wrong side of the ideological divide. A good journalist would be happy to take down anyone who is abusing power. But what we have are progressive activists. And the average political journalist is so invested in left-wing hysterias that they have lost a sense of skepticism, perhaps the most vital tool in journalism.
It might also come as a surprise to some, but the journalist’s central task isn’t to “tell the stories of people who can’t speak for themselves.” There’s nothing wrong with giving voice to the average person, and there are few things legacy media love more than a sob story that helps prop up their political cause, but the job is telling the truth whether people want to hear it or not.
“Local news is disappearing, and a much-depleted national press can barely compete with the media platforms of billionaires who control users algorithmically, with an endless stream of conspiracy theories and deepfakes,” Packer goes on,” The internet, which promised to give everyone information and a voice, has consolidated in just a few hands the power to destroy the very notion of objective truth.”
Like many journalists today, Packer’s salary is paid by a billionaire. More than most, his outlet is a partisan activist’s vanity project. Rich people have always owned and funded the media. It takes a significant expenditure of capital to run a decent news-gathering organization.
And even though legacy media are mired in stultified thinking, the internet has offered more journalistic diversity than ever. When Packer was starting out in journalism, three television networks dictated the narrative and conversation. There was virtually no way to challenge their depictions or assertions. The only accountability Walter Cronkite had was self-imposed. People tend to romanticize old media, but who knows how many times they misled the public? It wasn’t until a democratized internet that the dishonesty of people such as Dan Rather, who ran a concocted hit piece on George W Bush, could be effectively debunked. Now, a lot of ugly things go on within social media. But plenty of good things happen, as well.
And, of course, Packer’s real problem: the lack of gatekeeping. He’s upset that Elon Musk owns X.
Anyway, none of this is to champion “unbiased” journalism, which is a quixotic fairy tale. Every thinking person has biases — whether they’re ideological, experiential, regional, or religious. That’s not the point. The point is to make sure there are diverse voices across the media landscape, reporting and debating issues. Packer wants to keep an eye on the “plutocrats,” and others should want to keep an eye on the authoritarians who run our sprawling, unconstitutional Washington agencies. The problem is, with few exceptions, only one side is really covered by mainstream journalists.
Partisans naturally seek bubbles, and no one is innocent in this regard. But there has never been anything like the silos we see on national television and in the pages of national papers. If you can’t properly articulate your opponent’s position, your arguments are probably useless. After spending a decade lazily accusing everyone you disagree with of racism, fascism, and other phobias, I’m not sure these people can debate anymore.
Certainly not the younger journalists who have been brainwashed in journalism schools and are incapable of accepting the existence of good-faith opinions that grate against their sensibilities. In this culture, staffers will rebel and get the editorial page editor of the New York Times fired for publishing a completely reasonable editorial written by a sitting senator. In this culture, Atlantic staffers can’t abide working with a Trump critic such as Kevin Williamson.
We live in a world where journalists cry after hearing about a presidential Cabinet nomination. This is a culture problem, from top to bottom. It’s just pathetic.
Which is why it’s fun watching someone such as Scott Jennings on CNN, one of the very few conservatives on major media outside Fox News willing to defend Trump or his voters. Not merely because he’s often better prepared, but because he often brings up events and arguments that seem completely confounding to the left-wing panelists.
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The problem was never that journalists aggressively covered Trump. The problem is that they won’t aggressively cover anyone on their side. It is no small thing that journalists with access to the president hid his cognitive and physical decline — and, worse, gaslit those who pointed it out. How can anyone trust what they say now?
If they really wanted to fix journalism, it would be easy. Just act like every politician is Trump.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
