Journalism and the Age of Trump

Journalism ain't what it used to be.

As Donald Trump’s campaign predictably moves from toxic rhetoric targeting the most marginalized minorities to threats and use of violence, there is a growing sense that American institutions have been too lax about resisting it.

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[T]he rules of large media outlets – venerating faux objectivity over truth along with every other civic value – prohibit the sounding of any alarms. Under this framework of corporate journalism, to denounce Trump, or even to sound alarms about the dark forces he’s exploiting and unleashing, would not constitute journalism.

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An NPR Vice President, Michael Oreskes, published an internal memo to NPR staff this morning highlighting [commentator Cokie] Roberts’ non-reporting and non-employee role as a reason she would not be punished [for a column criticizing Trump], but he pointedly noted: “If Cokie were still a member of NPR’s staff we would not have allowed that.”

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That is the embodiment of the ethos of corporate journalism in America, and a potent illustration of why its fetishized reverence for “objectivity” is so rotted and even dangerous.

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This [...] is not new. We saw it repeatedly during the Bush years, when most large media outlets suppressed journalistic criticism of things like torture and grotesque war crimes carried out by the U.S. as part of the “War on Terror,” and even changed their language by adopting government euphemisms to obscure what was being done.

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Large corporations hate controversy (it alienates consumers) and really hate offending those who wield political power (bad for business).

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[Journalists have been reduced] to stenography drones permitted to do little more than summarize what each equally-valid side asserts. Worse, it ensures that people who wield great influence and power – such as Donald Trump – can engage in all sorts of toxic, dishonest, and destructive behavior without having to worry about any check from journalists, who are literally barred by their employers from speaking out (even as their employers profit greatly through endless coverage).

  The Intercept

Greenwald in 2013:

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.