Conservatives could look at today's incredibly fractured media environment and wonder why anyone would need to worry about the elite media, considering their trust numbers are in the basement (except among liberals) and their audiences keep eroding.
But just breathe the media air any day, and what we used to call the "dominant media" still dominates in setting the political agenda -- in determining what everyone talks about. There was an old maxim that the media can't tell you what to think, but they'll tell you what to think about.
This again came to mind when MS NOW host Nicolle Wallace interviewed Oliver Darcy, whose current business is energetically trying to reinforce the ideological rigor of the leftist press. Wallace told Darcy, "I still think that story selection is the most power we have, what you decide to shine a light on, especially now in the second Trump term."
Right now, that dominant story is the allegedly heroic resistance in Minneapolis to federal attempts to enforce the immigration laws. The daily narrative is that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are murdering innocent protesters in the streets. It's not just choosing the subject. It's the tone and tenor of the coverage. When it's 93 percent negative against ICE on the evening newscasts, it's a combination of time and tone intended to transform public opinion.
The media's pollsters will announce that Donald Trump's approval rating on immigration is slipping. They do polls to see if their journalism is having the intended political effect.
President Trump sent ICE into Minneapolis after it became apparent there was massive welfare fraud, and federal prosecutors convicted dozens of Somalis. That story was not selected for national distribution for months and months, and when it surfaced, they buried it again under the ICE story.
Negative angles against the local Democrats -- most especially the hot takes of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey -- are disparaged. Right after Wallace touted the media's power of story selection, she also raised the power of language -- "maybe the second most important thing, how we talk about them."
Reporters platform Democrats and leftists blurring the terms of the moment, calling illegal immigrants "our neighbors," our "immigrant community" and describing opposition to deportation as "keeping people safe." Deportation equals "terrorizing" Minneapolis.
The elitist media reject the language of Team Trump -- calling the protesters "left-wing agitators" and deem it hate speech. But Walz can call ICE "Trump's personal Gestapo," and Frey can tell ICE to "get the f--- out of Minneapolis," and that isn't treated as regrettable or hateful or inaccurate. Instead, TV hosts helped Frey talk about how all the left-wing agitation is "about love."
When you spit in the face of ICE and call them something like "mother-couplers" and kick out their taillights, feel the love. Nicolle Wallace used her language powers to describe Alex Pretti (who did all these things) as a "nonviolent bystander."
When an ex-Trump aide blamed Walz and Frey for creating the rhetorical environment for shooting deaths, CNN host Jake Tapper accused him of hating the First Amendment: "You have more of a problem with that than you have with people killing American citizens." That's using your language aggressively.
We know what liberal journalists would like to call this kind of journalism: "shared facts." As in conservatives can't accept facts that everyone should accept, that everyone supposedly used to accept when there was a much weaker conservative media. ICE personnel are Nazis, and their unglued opponents are angelic. Accept it, or you spread "misinformation." This kind of arrogance still needs to be exposed and resisted.
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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