One of the reasons I habitually read historian Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American early each morning is that she provides context, an important ingredient so often missing from the work of today’s political journalists. So many of us have been frustrated with the media “centering itself as the main story in a presidential campaign where the fate of democracy is in the balance.” Noah Berlatsky wrote earlier this week that this centering is “self-indicting” while illustrating all the ways in which the press has failed in the Trump era. Richardson would agree (in fact she linked to the Berlatsky essay), but she also provides the history about how media fails are nothing new, and what other generations have done when facing similar challenges.

In the October 10th edition of her newsletter, HCR noted that The Atlantic had endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president. “This is only the fifth time since its founding in 1857 that The Atlantic has endorsed a presidential candidate,” she wrote. The first time it did so was in 1860, when the magazine endorsed Abramham Lincoln.

But then Richardson goes on to provide some much-needed context.

“The Atlantic’s endorsement of Harris echoes its earlier endorsement of Lincoln, not only in its thorough dislike of Trump as ‘one of the most personally malignant and politically dangerous candidates in American history’—an echo of its 1860 warning that this election ‘is a turning-point in our history’—but because both endorsements show a new press challenging an older system.”

Why does that older system need challenging? Richardson explains.

“In a piece today, Matt Gertz of the media watchdog Media Matters reports that five major newspapers—the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post—produced nearly four times as many articles about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s email server in 2016 in the week after then–FBI director James Comey announced new developments in the story than they did about the unsealing of a new filing in Trump’s federal criminal indictment for alleged crimes related to the January 6 insurrection earlier this month. 

‘None of the papers ran even half as many Trump indictment stories as they did on Clinton’s server,’ Gertz wrote. ‘Indeed, every paper ran more front-page stories that mentioned Clinton’s server [than] they did total stories that referenced Trump’s indictment. The former president continues to benefit from news outlets grading him on a massive curve,’ Gertz wrote, ‘resulting in relatively muted coverage for his nakedly authoritarian, unfathomably racist, and allegedly criminal behavior.’”

I’m not going to repeat her entire October 10th essay, but I encourage you to read it if you haven’t already. HCR’s “History Extra” for October 10th about McClure’s Magazine continues along the same vein.

Many smart people in today’s new media are showing up every day to make it clear how much the corporate media is failing our country. Here are just three that surfaced in the last 24 hours:

• Kamala Harris doesn’t owe the mainstream press anything by Noah Berlatsky on Public Notice
• Kamala is making the corporate-controlled media cry by Jeff Tiedrich on everyone is entitled to my own opinion (caution: salty language)
• NYT “Censors” Elon Musk’s Jokes about Assassinating the Vice President and His “Censorship” of JD Vance Dossier by Marcy Wheeler on Emptywheel

In the past, “when the media has appeared to become captive to established interests, new media have begun to give a voice to the opposition,” Richardson writes. The New York Times and Washington Post are both captive to a status quo that supports their billionaire owners. Kamala Harris is focused on winning the election in 2024, not appeasing the owners of the Times and the Post. She is seeking to turn out new voters and she does that by reaching them in the venues where they receive news. “Harris has recognized that media shift by focusing her media appearances on podcasts like Call Her Daddy, radio shows like Howard Stern’s, and television shows like The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and The View. Based on averages, those shows reached 25 million or more people. These are not people who read the editorial pages of the New York Times.

Berlatsky is spot on with the ending to his essay. “Harris doesn’t have any obligation to help the mainstream media hand the election to Trump again. On the contrary, she has a responsibility to find better ways to talk to the American people about the threat we face.”

More to come . . .

DJB

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