Fair and Balanced
In the lead up to the 2016 election, US journalists faced a dilemma. They “came of age” in an era of the “equal time” doctrine, where broadcast media were required to make sure each candidate for office got equal time in news and other unpaid exposures. They also came from the Edward R Murrow/Walter Cronkite “school” of broadcast journalism, where the media was supposed to be unbiased, presenting the information for the evaluation of the “consumer”, the American public.
(There’s certainly an argument that “neutrality” was never really true. Murrow saw his job as revealing the truth. His broadcasts certainly revealed the lies behind Senator Joseph McCarthy’s movement. And even though Cronkite was a “liberal” in his private views, a friend of John F Kennedy, his journalism was “level”. That is, until he revealed his opinion on the Vietnam War. But those departures from “level” were exceptions, not the rule).
With the advent of 24/7 cable news, there was a need to find a “niche” of loyal viewers. What was once “unbiased” media became “advocacy” broadcasting. Rupert Murdock, Roger Ailes and Fox “News” started it. Their “Fair and Balanced” newscasts slanted to the conservative, and for a decade they took the lion’s share of viewership.
Mirror Image
24/7 “news” on the right demanded 24/7 “news” on the left. Two organizations tried to fill that void; MSNBC and the original 24/7 news, CNN, who tried to maintain “neutrality”. They managed to lose viewers from both directions. Staying “neutral” wasn’t a commercial option for them. So CNN began to “drift” to progressive as well. Ultimately the three mirrored the American political split, with Fox getting about half of the cable news viewership, and CNN and MSNBC splitting the other half. (More recently, MSNBC took most of the “left”, and CNN veered to the center/right to try to gain viewers back. So far, that hasn’t worked).
And it wasn’t just the broadcast media. The giants of newsprint; the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post all had their editorial bias, but the “newsroom” was, theoretically, strictly neutral. And, along with the “regular” broadcast media, CBS, NBC and ABC (and PBS) they all maintained their “equal time” of “unbiased” coverage.
Broken System
Donald Trump broke that. He had a very different approach to the media, one that, love him or hate him, worked. Trump learned his media strategy from the tabloid dailies of New York, the New York Post and the National Enquirer. Those newspapers had only a tangential relationship with the truth, and a huge financial stake in controversy. The way to “win” in the tabloids was to be the story. Good news, bad news, anything was better than no news. And so Trump took that hard won New York knowledge to the national media.
Trump discovered that the more he talked, the more attention he got. In 2015, when the Trump candidacy was still a late-night talk show joke, he called into his “friends” on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, day after day. The premier progressive political morning show gave Trump all the time he could ask for, even if the host was critical, and even if his answers didn’t come close to the questions. Trump was “out”, all the time.
The show invited Clinton to do the same. But Hillary, a traditional politician, was not interesting in being “entertainment”. So MSNBC didn’t worry about “equal time”, and Trump supporters tuned in to hear their leader. It was a ratings “win” for the network, and it made Trump a “real” candidate.
He was always the story – often for what were negative statements, actions, or events. He lied, he was outrageous, he broke all of the political “norms” that American politics and journalism depended upon. Even when Trump was “in trouble” with the Access Hollywood tape, in one sense, he was still winning. The spotlight remained on him.
Balance
Add that to the “equal time” inclination, and the “serious” media were forced to balance Trump’s negatives with “equal” Clinton negatives. So her email scandal dragged on and on; the one big story the media used to show “fairness”. And any other Clinton failings (she passed out from illness after the 9/11 ceremonies in New York) were magnified, mostly because it balanced the ongoing Trump negative coverage. Then FBI Director Comey reopened the email investigation into the Weiner laptop, and changed the entire political landscape. But Trump’s negatives were “accepted”, because, that’s just who he was. They still are.
In the after-action reports from 2017, the media lamented their loyalty to “equal time”. But they continued to kowtow to the new Trump reality: some even made the editorial decision to stop saying the Trump was lying. He did it so often, they felt the word “lie” lost its power. Fact-checking Donald Trump became a joke, an arduous exercise in truth-telling that few took the time to do.
2020
The election of 2020 was fundamentally different because of Covid. The candidates (even Trump) were isolated from normal public appearances, and their statements were often vetted by staff before release. The Trump charge of Biden “campaigning from his basement in Delaware” actually had some truth, and Trump himself was restricted as well. And when they did appear in debates, the moderators were “tougher” on holding Trump statements to the truth. Trump lost.
In 2016 the rally going, free speaking, unchecked (and unleashed) Trump won, in spite of the Access Hollywood tape. In 2020, the literally muzzled and masked Trump lost. He understood the lesson. In 2024, he was absolutely prepared to come out as the “active” candidate, opposing the octogenarian President Biden. But then, Biden turned the tables, leaving the race to his much younger and more energetic Vice President, Kamala Harris.
And the media itself has changed. Fox News wasn’t loyal enough for MAGA world. So outlets appeared to their right, like Newsmax, the Daily Caller, and all of the web-based actors like Steve Bannon’s War Room. The media world of 2024 is splintered. Facts matter even less, and impact (clicks) matter more. Fox lost viewers to the right, and that pushed the network to return to Trump.
2024
So here we are, a week before the Democratic convention and the official “coronation” of Harris and Walz. After the uproar of the last three weeks: assassination attempt, Republican convention, Biden’s withdrawal, Harris’s acceptance, and the Walz candidacy; what looked like 2020 a month ago looks a whole lot more like 2016 today. The Harris campaign has the advantage of learning from the Clinton mistakes, but the Trump campaign has learned as well. The Democrats may be “joyful warriors”, but it’s still likely to be a very close decision.
But, so far, it doesn’t seem the media has learned much. They are falling back into the 2016 trap. Trump did a “press event” the other day. He rambled for an hour, ostensibly answering press questions. But his answers had little to do with the “prompts”, and the media did little to fact-check or follow-up whatever he said. It was “Mr. President” (he isn’t) and polite conversation without interruption, something Joe Biden hasn’t heard from the press for three years.
Trump got an hour to rant, but the following Harris rally was summarized in five minutes. Trump lied over and over again, with no direct challenge. A couple of news outlets did a half-hearted effort at factchecking afterwards, but most just let him go.
So as we was enter the last eighty day sprint of campaign 2024; watch what the news media does. Their impact may be fragmented by the web, but they still have an obligation to find something that resembles the truth – I hope.
