Opinion: The
media fails to meet the moment
Opinion by
Columnist
Feb. 12, 2021 at 9:24 a.m. CST
Less than a month
into the new presidency, many mainstream media reporters are floundering. Given
a normal, competent administration moving quickly on multiple fronts, too many
in the media often do not seem cut out to cover the influx of substantive policy.
Instead, they have reverted to a number of crutches and false assumptions.
First, rather than
ask tough questions on a slew of policy issues, White House reporters comically
allot a good deal of the 45 minutes in the daily briefings to ask what President
Biden is thinking about impeachment, why he is not watching and why he won’t
tell them what he is thinking and watching. How can he not tell us? Hmm, maybe
because he is fighting myriad historic crises. Don’t we deserve to hear his
views? No. Isn’t he really watching? No, he takes his job seriously.
This fixation is
childish, but worse, it’s a poor substitute for asking questions on things that
matter. For example, we need the media to examine the true state of state
finances, especially those controlled by obstructionist Republicans, and the
effect that the new administration’s return to a values-based foreign policy is
having on dissidents and their oppressors. Where is the coverage of the toll
that long-term unemployment is having on individuals and communities?
Second, reporters —
despite evidence to the contrary — assume (or pretend to assume) Republicans
are acting in good faith. They tell us with a straight face that the voluminous
impeachment evidence has not persuaded Senate Republican jurors, as if these
Republicans ever intended to listen to evidence. They pepper Biden’s press
secretary, Jen Psaki, with questions as to why he is not being more bipartisan
— despite replete evidence (from their conduct at the impeachment trial, for
one thing) that fact-based politics is not Republicans’ thing. They do not
grill Republicans as to why they are out of the mainstream of their own party’s voters on a
rescue plan. Refusing to recognize Republicans as cynical, hardened partisans
is the newest, worst form of false equivalency between the parties.
Third, for all the
coverage of the trial itself, the media does not take domestic terrorism
seriously. Remember in the wake of 9/11, when the media for years rightly gave
top billing to the dangers posed by Islamist terrorism? Who were the radicals?
Who was harboring them? Where did their money come from? What religious figures
were turning them into violent extremists? There is no comparable interest in
probing the same questions with regard to domestic Christian White nationalists
who have turned to terrorism. Have they been grilling community and religious
leaders from the terrorists’ hometowns as to why they have not denounced the
violent, racist elements in their midst? That is how they treated Muslim
communities after 9/11. With scenes of extremists carrying the Confederate
battle flag in the Capitol, why have we not seen Republicans asked to explain
their defense of these symbols on flags and their reverence for traitorous
secessionist military figures?
It is as if reporters
do not recognize we are in an entirely new political environment in which one
party has been radicalized by authoritarian, racist demagogues while the other
earnestly tries to engage in problem-solving, imperfectly of course.
Journalists are not diligently covering either half of the
equation. Instead of giving scrutiny to members of a party that has itself
helped radicalize insurrectionists and defends the seditionist leader, they
pretend Republicans act in good faith. Instead of scrutinizing Biden policy
decisions and the myriad national challenges, the media resorts to trivial,
petty issues.