A few years ago, Jon Lovett floated a theory that media treats Democrats like protagonists - to be challenged, accounted, and forced to be behave in growth-oriented ways - while the GOP are treated like antagonists - immutable, expected to disrupt, thematic obstacles.
Thinking about that a lot.
I don’t recall the NYT calling for Trump to step down after being convicted of 34 counts of fraud and being called by a judge at his civil trial a rapist in the common person sense
This was meant to explain how the media can believe they have a leftward slant - viewing Dems as their “heroes” - while simultaneously playing out a rightward bias by “bothsidesing” and pricing in low expectations for Republican humanity.
The story of Election 2024 is obviously “will the villainous Trump return to destroy democracy once and for all?” Almost no one - Republicans included - denies this narrative. But the media’s refusal to participate makes it feel more out of “narrative integrity” than journalistic.
“Will the old hero be forced to step down or rally once again? Has the Good Man wearied and lost his way? Has he carried the burden too long? Did he become too morally grey?”
And now, “will he pass the sword to a new hero, whose trial we begin now?”
Feels more like we're trapped in a horror flick. You know, I know, & the NYT especially knows that none of us should be planning a wacky wkend in an abandoned house at the end of a depopulated valley. But here we go! It'll be fun!
Oh, no, Donald IS going to mow us all down with his golf cart scythe!
Saying that Biden should step down because he’s not up to the task of defeating the villainous Trump seems like total participation in the “Will democracy be destroyed?” narrative.
I remember one of On the Media's primary theses is to never get between the press and a favorite Narrative for they'll grasp it to the death like a raccoon and a shiny thing.
And the media was complicit in not questioning Biden's fitness to do a second term. Everybody was like, okay, cool, until they suddenly realized he sounds like he's dying of old age
Murc's Law, "The widespread assumption that only Democrats have any agency or causal influence over American politics", has been around since at least 2017. Longer I am sure.
I think this is a partial answer to the problem, frankly. Having a shorthand for a problem- already in place in this instance!- makes it easier to call out the problem when it pops up
Kind of wild how Republicans being in every way worse than Democrats has caused many of us to create a literal double standard where they ignore evil by Republicans, from whom they expect it, but not from Democrats, who are expected to be better, and then decide they're the same so why bother voting
Basic white hats and black hats script. You introduce the players and stakes in the first act. You need to manufacture a moral crisis for the white hats and question their leadership in the second act, and you better make sure the black hats *nearly* win in the third act.
This is the actual expression of the overwhelming Democratic bias of journalists. Republicans are "others", and to a liberal, others are to be respected, understood, and included. Democrats are "us" and to a liberal "we" are to be questioned and challenged and pushed to improve.
See also the UK, which is why the media (privately educated, moneyed, insulated) are so stunned by the utter shoeing the Tories are on course to receive next week.
But antagonists who must be treated fairly, all the same. The clever boys and girls must simply try to out-clever them, never exercise power or call them out. It's a pattern very familiar to how some academic managers handle quiet systematic defunding.
Similarly, someone on the bad place once said that the media treats Dems like women (to be challenged, thwarted) and the GOP like (white) men (powerful, immutable, destructive and yet blameless because even their destructive power is as "natural" as a tornado). I've thought about this a lot, too.
I mean, that's a literal, denotative truth, yah? In our system, the left has the task of manifesting growth/change & the right has the task of hindering it, whether for social or financial reasons. They're meant to work in tandem, a single PushMe-PullYou entity; I don't think media caused the split.
Right, it’s created this strange tension where the center is actually “conservative” in the sense of “prudent, analyzed governance” (or even “governance, period”)
Another take: justifiable fear of reprisal. Right wing capitalists invented "cancel culture" as a weapon against mild criticism long before progressives employed it as a tool for societal change
I can see this in the US.
But even the nominally "left" media in the UK does this too. The kid-glove treatment of deranged far-right crackpots like Farage is appalling.
In a way it's justified, or would be if only they could recognize that's what they're doing. Democrats and journalists both belong to the "reality-based community", they speak very similar languages. But journalists cling so hard to the belief that they can/should take the "view from nowhere".
I think there are also just people who like to pretend they are liberal or impartial but the give advice that always is liberal have to be more racist.
