Stephen Sackur, host of the BBC's Hard Talk, recently interviewed Martin Baron, the (fairly) recently retired editor of the Washington Post. Just when we thought the chicken littles had been served up as chicken dinner with media pundits pivoting towards the durability of our constitution and away from chimerical existential threats, Baron parrots the pre-election punditry served up by jurassic "journalists." Between decrying all the bad things the prez-elect will do, he belabored the loss of "authority" by the dying media that was his livelihood. And how does he know what T2 will do? Because Trump said he would. Anyone who's been paying attention for the past ten years has heard many prevarications, seen enormous amounts of "fact checking," and been told time and again, by dinosaurs like Baron, that "he's a liar." But Baron, and only those like Baron, can tell his truths from his lies. There, according to Baron, lies journalistic "authority" as in authoritative, not authoritarian. Yet.
But dino-media have lost this authority with many in the public no longer seeing them as purveyors of fact and objectivity, of truth. Critics of last generation media see them as politicized propagandists, but since almost no one under the age of forty even consumes legacy "output" their ability to move the needle has gone the way of their authority. Their transition to biased influence and prevarication is being "fact checked" in the courts. George Snuffleupagus stepped in it when he declared, on air, that Trump had been found guilty of rape. Fact: he was found, in a civil suit, liable of sexual abuse. As a "journalist" Snuffleupagus should, and probably did, know better. ABC, knowing the only defense against libel is the truth, wisely dodged their day in court by agreeing to pay up $15M. Of course this further convinced the public of ABC's devotion to the left at any cost. No authority, just politics.
Now, tee up the Des Moines Register. And their recently retired pollster. Seems the pollster, in the week before the election, concluded that Iowa flipped from Trump to Harris with Harris commanding a three point lead. The Register dutifully printed it, after all it was what they wanted to believe. The pollster was only off by about fifteen points. Now she and the Register are facing their own fact checking. In court. Accused of election interference. By the winner. They didn't lose their authority, they threw it away. Of course Baron sees this as an illegitimate attack on the Fourth Estate, wants to hide behind the First Amendment and claims the court case is an existential threat to American democracy. Almost as if he is crying lawfare.
Sackur challenged Baron on key points, but more importantly suggested that maybe, just maybe, the media empire of the previous millennium has fallen. And it can't get up. The cause of death? Suicide. Like the dinosaurs of yore, they did not adapt to a changing environment, they pretended that their business model would endure. It didn't. So what did they do? They doubled down. When that didn't work, they decided to pick a team, a political team, one they thought would align with them, support them, giving up a broad fan base for a smaller group of fervent followers. It isn't clear it ever did work, but it certainly has failed. Perhaps having a media star, like Snuffleupagus, lie about someone he has consistently called a liar, just doesn't play well in Peoria. The Fourth Estate had become accustomed to thinking of themselves as king makers, but they have not been very good at it. Had they been, we would be seeing the close out of Hillary's second term and not T2. The media not only gave up on facts and objectivity, they replaced introspection with arrogance. After all, they are the only ones claiming media authority is even a thing. They had no clue their transparent partisanship would backfire. Maybe telling voters that their candidate is in the lead isn't the best way to get out the vote, at least not for their candidate.
They knew what they were doing, or wanted to do, they just didn't know how to do it.
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