Berating the media has become a national pastime, practiced mostly by conservatives although liberals are in on the act, too. But it raises important questions: Who, exactly, is "the media"? Who among the media can be counted on to get the facts right? How biased is the media?
To Trump and acolytes like Pete Hegseth, the media is basically anyone who criticizes them, fairly or not. Trump and company have made a concerted effort to rein in those they consider the media bad boys -- by attempting to constrict White House or Pentagon briefings only to those outlets favorable to the administration, by threatening to withdraw the broadcast licenses of networks engaging in critical coverage, or by other means. But in the complex 21st-century media environment, such attempts at information control can only be so effective. Beyond the boundaries of the "mainstream" media detested by the administration is a sprawling hodgepodge of so-called media of all political persuasions, spewing a firehose worth of factual information, opinion, make-believe, provocation, deception, and incomprehensible gobbledygook.
As the Trump administration and the American public learned this winter in Minneapolis, anybody with a smartphone can be stirred into the media mix. When all is added up, truth-tellers and mythologizers (and amateurs and professionals) blend almost seamlessly into a great informational stew, in print, on television, on the radio, and especially on the internet. Good luck to Trump and his gang in trying to control that. For the average media consumer, the challenge is to cull the kernels of truth and reality from the flood of hype, nonsense, and partisanship.
This might make one yearn nostalgically for the media of the previous century, when a news anchor like Walter Cronkite was universally accepted as a voice of irreproachable and nonpartisan authority. But in the history of the media in the U.S., the Cronkite years of the late 20th century might have been an historical anomaly. The journalistic pursuit of impartiality and factual accuracy is a relatively modern concept; newspapers of the 18th and 19th centuries were unabashed about political bias and accusation, making no pretense at objectivity.
The media of the 21st century seems to be trending back in that direction. In recent years, for example, Fox News abandoned the noble-sounding slogan "fair and balanced," in an acknowledgment of its unmistakable tilt to the right. (While often journalistically diligent, Fox hasn't furthered an image of fair and balanced reporting by plopping a lightweight, right-wing giggler like Jessie Watters in the heart of prime time.) On the other side of the coin, the New York Times might arguably be fairer and more balanced, but media watchdogs generally label the Times as being liberally biased. And the Times and Fox News are big kids on the media block, subjected to heightened scrutiny from all points on the political spectrum. When media consumers wander farther afield into the honeycombed landscape of websites, podcasts, streaming services, radio shows and so on, bias becomes more pronounced and objectivity and truth scatter to the wind.
In the expanding decentralization of the media in the 21st century, the demise of nonpartisan objectivity is to be expected. More troubling is the demise of factual accuracy and truth. (One is reminded of former senator Patrick Moynihan's famous line: "Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.") This is not just a matter of slipshod or lazy journalism, although it often is. Deliberate deception on the internet has become a dark political art through the use of artificial intelligence and other powerful tools in the online tool chest.
Trump loves dissing the fake news, but ironically, his targets are usually the least fake news outlets -- major TV networks and newspapers, with excellent track records of accuracy if not necessarily partisan neutrality. For example, Trump hates both the Times and the Wall Street Journal, but they've forged time-honored reputations for thorough research, layers of fact-checking, and comprehensive legal vetting. The internet is where that fastidious approach goes to die, and where fakery thrives. A handful of online sites try to talk a factually honest (if possibly biased) talk -- Politico comes to mind -- but they wallow in a swamp of mendacity and manipulation.
Furthermore, Trump's belittling of the traditional, most scrupulous media only helps to drive both his opponents and his supporters deeper into the partisan cavities of the internet, toward marginal websites, wacked-out podcasts, and social-media posts. Consider the popular podcaster Joe Rogan, who by internet standards is relatively mainstream and conscientious. Rogan is exceedingly influential -- a 21st-century Walter Cronkite of sorts -- but, like much on the internet, his shows are a mix of opinion, speculation, and fantasy, not hard news.
As media consumers increasingly turn to even sketchier internet outlets to shape their understanding of national and world affairs, the country's citizenship becomes less well informed and more politically divided. No winners there.
Historically, a robust free press, acting in a kind of ombudsman's role, holds the feet of those in power, politically and economically, to the fire. Great examples are the reporting of Ida Tarbell, of McClure's magazine in the early 1900s, in revealing the monopolistic behavior of Standard Oil. Or the New York Times's publishing of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, exposing the duplicity of the federal government's public posturing on the progress of the Vietnam War.
The attenuation of a healthy and professional free press will only embolden government, business, and other major institutions to lie, cheat, and steal at the expense of the public. It remains to be seen if any of the nouveau media can step up to the plate in a traditional oversight role. A few websites are trying. But given the amateurishness, narrowmindedness, and make-believe that currently pervades the internet, there is good reason to doubt that they can succeed.
Oliver lives in Warren.
