Depressed Press
The media business is falling apart in front of our eyes - if people are watching
My column at The Spectator, which you’d have in dead tree form if you subscribe!
There is a recurring type of incident that reflects the insularity of today’s media class: “Everyone was talking about it, but no one reported it.” There is no stronger indictment of contemporary media bias — it doesn’t arise just out of partisanship, nor out of opposition to reporting stories that displease our ruling class. It reaches the point of actively lying and covering up things any average American knows to be true.
The most prominent recent example is found in the reaction to Special Counsel Robert Hur’s findings regarding Joe Biden’s hoarding of classified documents. Despite the wealth of evidence of illegal mishandling, Hur would not bring suit against the president, believing that a jury would be unlikely to convict a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” All at once, it seemed like every White House journalist with a story about Biden’s age and heightened confusion was willing to address a wildly obvious truth: the man is declining precipitously before our eyes, and White House staff, angry as they might be about the coverage, are incapable of hiding it any longer.
The media doesn’t stop at pretending Joe Biden is a fully functional president. It goes far beyond that, lacking the self-reflection to consider the possibility that a major reason for journalism’s struggles in the post-Covid era is directly tied to this lack of public trust. For Republicans, there was the Hunter Biden laptop story; for Democrats, there was the collapse of the hopes of Russiagate; and for Independents (and everyone else) there was the total disaster of the rush to judgment on Covid. The media ran with health advice that was decreed, then debunked, policy responses that were decried, then approved — and, of course, the societal upheaval, disastrous job and educational loss and mandatory vaccines that turned out to be a lot less effective than they were sold as being. If someone lies to you that much, giving themselves awards along the way, eventually you stop taking them at their word.
Polls say trust in media is at an all-time low. But a better reflection than that can be found in what’s happening in the journalism business, where the effects of that lost trust are measurable and astonishing. Last year saw media job losses of over 21,400 — the worst non-Covid year since the financial crisis and Great Recession of 2008-09. The first two months of 2024 have seen the job losses continue; some prominent entities have shut down entirely. The Messenger, Jimmy Finkelstein’s latest outlet, laid off all 300 staffers; Sports Illustrated laid off almost its entire staff; and VICE announced it would stop publishing entirely. NBC News, CBS News, TIME magazine, the Los Angeles Times and Condé Nast all saw layoffs in the double and triple digits. Even the insulation of Washington wasn’t enough to keep journalists employed – the Wall Street Journal gutted its DC bureau, and NPR shut down its local DCist site to focus on audio. And BuzzFeed, which cut back its entire news division to save on costs in 2023, announced further cuts and spun off its Complex brand in February for cash — less than a decade after it was named one of the media’s “most valuable startups” by Business Insider, which itself cut 8 percent of staff in January.
The great hemorrhaging over the media landscape should give its members pause. But instead, they’re behaving like The Simpsons’ Principal Skinner: “Am I so out of touch? No, it’s the children who are wrong.” Rather than recruiting a more ideologically diverse newsroom or responding to the success of heterodox outlets on Substack, YouTube and Spotify by bringing similar voices into their commentary sections, they foment accusations of misinformation and disinformation, and even call on government entities to censor their freestanding competitors and keep the old guard in a protective bubble.
Politico’s national investigative correspondent, Heidi Przybyla, offered a perfect example of the media mindset in a February appearance on All In With Chris Hayes, where she attempted to describe the real danger of Donald Trump’s potential return to power as being his support among “Christian nationalists.” Citing her conversations “with a lot of experts on this,” Przybyla described these extremists: “They believe that our rights as Americans, as all human beings, don’t come from any earthly authority. They don’t come from Congress, they don’t come from the Supreme Court, they come from God.” Przybyla was promptly deluged on social media as people called attention to the many, many Americans who’ve shared this “extreme” belief, starting with the authors of the Declaration of Independence — in response, rather than expressing humility, she doubled down.
Back in December 2016, then-New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet reacted to the shock of Donald Trump’s election by addressing the newsroom’s lack of religious diversity. In an interview with NPR, he said, “We have a fabulous religion writer, but she’s all alone. We don’t get religion. We don’t get the role of religion in people’s lives. And I think we can do much, much better.” Eight years later, no one is doing much better at covering these basic, normal issues — and people are tuning out because of it.
Democrats: The Pandemic Isn’t Over
Over half of Democrats do not believe the Covid-19 pandemic is over, new polling from Gallup has shown.
The poll found that only 41% of Democrats say the pandemic is over, versus 79% of Republicans and 63% of independent voters who think the same. At the same time, 57% of all US adults report that their lives have not returned to normal, and 43% expect they never will.
While those on the Left of the spectrum in particular have clung onto the belief that the pandemic is not over, the overall percentage of pandemic-fearing Americans actually rose to 47% last September before steadily falling to 41% today.
This attitude comes in spite of President Joe Biden telling CBS in September 2022 that the “pandemic is over”. He was met with immediate resistance from his own administration, as well as from the media and the public health establishment.
Press coverage has played a role in this partisan split over Covid, with Left-leaning mainstream outlets continuing to publish articles which raise fears over the persistent dangers of the disease. “Covid isn’t over, and we shouldn’t act like it is,” a letter run in the Washington Postdeclared just last month. “Covid is back, and the U.S. is unprepared for the next bug,” read a January headline from the same outlet’s editorial board. Also that month, the New Republic warned that “Democrats can’t keep ignoring Covid in 2024.”
Bob Good Faces Ouster
Jihadists inevitably turn on themselves.
Among those facing primary challenges this year, one of the most competitive races is for the seat held by Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), who has established himself as a hard-liner willing to buck leadership at the detriment of his own party.
Now, Good, who was elected to lead the hard-right House Freedom Caucus earlier this year, is facing a tough primary election on June 18 — and several of his Republican colleagues are backing his challenger, John McGuire.
“Good luck,” Good told reporters on Tuesday. “Most of them should come and campaign for my opponent in my district. That would be what really helps me.”
And, in fact, several of his colleagues are coming to his district to campaign for his opponent.
Several House Republicans, including Reps. Mike Rogers (R-AL), Austin Scott (R-GA), Jen Kiggans (R-VA), Ryan Zinke (R-MT), Derrick Van Orden (R-WI), and Morgan Luttrell (R-TX), are set to accompany McGuire at a campaign event Wednesday, a sign of trouble for Good as he fights for another term.
“John’s awesome,” Van Orden told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday. “Being a member of the SEAL teams, [he] understands what it means to be on a team. If you’re wearing the jersey, you’re on the team. If you’re wearing the jersey and you’re not on the team, I don’t want you on the team. It’s that simple.”
Good crossed former President Donald Trump by backing Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) for president and turned on former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. He was one of eight Republicans to vote last October to oust the speaker, careening the House into a leaderless three-week period filled with infighting.
An Anti-Religious Crackdown
The second problematic change is the administration’s scaling back of faith-based groups’ freedom to select employees who share their religious mission and worldview. The applicable federal antidiscrimination law, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. But Title VII explicitly does not apply to a religious organization’s employment decisions about individuals who “perform work connected with the carrying . . . of [the organization’s] activities.” The Trump administration, in keeping with most federal courts, interpreted this exemption to allow religious groups to favor employees who embrace their religious “tenets” as a condition of employment. This understanding of Title VII’s religious liberty protection gave providers the peace of mind that federal agencies would honor their right to ensure that their employees fully embraced their religious mission.
While acknowledging that all government programs are bound by Title VII’s religious-employer exemption, the Biden administration excised the language from previous guidance allowing religious enterprises to require their employees to adhere to their religious “tenets.” This restrains their religious freedom by limiting (or eliminating) their ability to consider potential employees’ religious beliefs. Such restrictions are apparently in tension with recent Supreme Court cases guaranteeing religious organizations the freedom to select employees who perform what are broadly conceived as “ministerial” roles.
These portions of the administration’s new regulations either violate existing federal laws protecting religious liberty, are unconstitutional, or both. Those without such statutory or constitutional problems still impose new burdens that will lead some religious enterprises to pass on participating in important programs at all. For those faith-based organizations that do continue to participate, the new rules will unnecessarily restrict their religious freedom and autonomy, and in so doing, will undermine their effectiveness. Religious providers, and the many millions of men, women, children, and families whom they serve, deserve better.
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Biden stutters into the presidential campaign.
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Podcast
Quote
“Remember, we Christians think man lives for ever. Therefore, what really matters is those little marks or twists on the central, inside part of the soul which are going to turn it, in the long run, into a heavenly or a hellish creature.”
— C.S. Lewis