With the calendar flip there is usually a dose of inspired activity of betterment, change, alterations, and other supposedly positive moves for the year ahead. We here at RFTH are not about all that. We are pretty comfortable with our lot here. But we will be looking ahead and adding a few more facets to this enterprise for the new year.
One thing we cannot do is make a prediction. Literally, look at how things are in the media complex these days; who the HELL knows what lies ahead?! Funny enough, this all stems from our predictions one year ago being somewhat spot-on. Last year on our media podcast at sibling site RedState, we noted how the press was forging ahead with a self-disqualifying energy. Now, we are not claiming to have predicted the extent of the media mayhem, but we were upfront in saying the press was creating their own demise and showed no willingness to look at themselves and address blatant problems.
Well look at 2024 and note how we were both accurate, and way, WAY off in noting just how far the press was willing to sink. In the first half of the year, we saw news outlets not only denying Joe Biden’s slumping faculties but literally attacking those of us pointing out the clear problems. We saw the press corps both refusing to investigate all while fighting against the release of accurate news.
Two Bidens: Some of us are watching long, complete speeches by the president. Others just watching short, out of context clips on social media. Two audiences are seeing two very different reflections. pic.twitter.com/fg8Sle9qpK
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) June 19, 2024
The changeover at the top of the Democratic Party ticket also exposed the press. Note how few of the newsmakers applauding Joe Biden stepping down were not so curious about how the doddering Biden would lead the nation for the ensuing seven months, nor willing to ask who behind the scenes was actually running the show. Those who claimed to “hold the powerful accountable” were willing to give President Silver Alert a Hall Pass and participation trophy.
The second half of the year was just as bad. Running the PR campaign for Kamala Harris in audacious fashion, rewriting her work record was bad enough, but we actually saw outlets praising her tactic of not conducting interviews and delivering her platform. The press applauded her avoiding the press. How exactly are we supposed to guess how these people will behave professionally?
The most telling sign was the reaction in the weeks after the election. The sober reality that so much of the country disregarded the press regarding the election was almost a shock to their systems. Look at the muted reactions in the industry after November 5. When Trump first won in 2016, there was heightened energy from the media. Outlets hired more staffers to go after him, abandoning pretense and objectivity was regarded as a justifiable reaction, and many felt a new dawning of the Woodward & Bernstein era would arrive.
Now look at today. Journalists, such as Peter Baker, are saying they are tired of the Trump firehose of news, and Norah O’Donnell is stepping down from her seat at the CBS Evening News desk. CNN announced it will soon be issuing layoffs after the election, and Comcast threw in the towel by saying it is spinning off its cable channel properties, bogged down by MSNBC. There is a pall over the news industry.
But we will stay on the case of holding the press accountable. We do this not to drag the media down, but in the hopes of dragging them back to some level of – well, if not credibility, then at least some modicum of respectability. It is needed if they hope to survive, otherwise they will be overtaken by alternative media, leaving them to carp in hollow fashion about the public preferring misinformation, deluding themselves that their exposed lies were not the cause of the downfall.
We are toying with including some new items as well with our daily column. We will be cataloguing those outlets that engaged in some of the most egregious departures from journalism, including the Biden is sharp hoax, repeating Jeffrey Goldberg’s immediately debunked hit piece on Trump, or those pushing that fraudulent Iowa state poll showing Kamala was leading with voters. These need to be called back up whenever the same sources slide into lecturing condescension.
We are drawing up a list of pundits so disgraced by now they no longer warrant coverage, as their departure from journalism is such that they defy inclusion. We also are noodling on the idea of collecting supreme nuggets of media hot takes that are so mentally impacted they need to be framed in gold filigree and displayed – We might just need to appropriate the no longer employed name “Newseum” for this cause.
Any other suggestions for new elements from you will also be entertained. Okay, go stretch out and take a breather for now. The new year will be unravelling soon enough, and we are certain it could take all of our energy to push through the tall grass of media mayhem ahead of us.
