Ubiquitous
2023-08-05 01:05:05 UTC
The mood in the Washington press corps is bleak, and deservedly so.
It shouldnt come as a surprise to anyone that, with a few exceptions,
we were all tacitly or explicitly #WithHer, which has led to a certain
anguish in the face of Donald Trumps victory. More than that and more
importantly, we also missed the story, after having spent months
mocking the people who had a better sense of what was going on.
This is all symptomatic of modern journalisms great moral and
intellectual failing: its unbearable smugness. Had Hillary Clinton won,
thered be a winking we did it feeling in the press, a sense that we
were brave and called Trump a liar and saved the republic.
What does Trump's victory mean? 14:37
So much for that. The audience for our glib analysis and contempt for
much of the electorate, it turned out, was rather limited. This was
particularly true when it came to voters, the ones who turned out by
the millions to deliver not only a rebuke to the political system but
also the people who cover it. Trump knew what he was doing when he
invited his crowds to jeer and hiss the reporters covering him. They
hate us, and have for some time.
And can you blame them? Journalists love mocking Trump supporters. We
insult their appearances. We dismiss them as racists and sexists. We
emote on Twitter about how this or that comment or policy makes us feel
one way or the other, and yet we reject their feelings as invalid.
Its a profound failure of empathy in the service of endless posturing.
Theres been some sympathy from the press, sure: the dispatches from
heroin country that read like reports from colonial administrators
checking in on the natives. But much of that starts from the assumption
that Trump voters are backward, and that its our duty to catalogue and
ultimately reverse that backwardness. What can we do to get these
people to stop worshiping their false god and accept our gospel?
We diagnose them as racists in the way Dark Age clerics confused
medical problems with demonic possession. Journalists, at our worst,
see ourselves as a priestly caste. We believe we not only have access
to the indisputable facts, but also a greater truth, a system of
beliefs divined from an advanced understanding of justice.
Youd think that Trumps victory the one we all discounted too far in
advance would lead to a certain newfound humility in the political
press. But of course thats not how it works. To us, speaking broadly,
our diagnosis was still basically correct. The demons were just
stronger than we realized.
This is all a whitelash, you see. Trump voters are racist and sexist,
so there must be more racists and sexists than we realized. Tuesday
nights outcome was not a logic-driven rejection of a deeply flawed
candidate named Clinton; no, it was a primal scream against fairness,
equality, and progress. Let the new tantrums commence!
Trump's victory marks seismic shift in America 03:33
Thats the fantasy, the idea that if we mock them enough, call them
racist enough, theyll eventually shut up and get in line. Its similar
to how media Twitter works, a system where people who dissent from the
proper framing of a story are attacked by mobs of smugly incredulous
pundits. Journalists exist primarily in a world where people can get
shouted down and disappear, which informs our attitudes toward all
disagreement.
Journalists increasingly dont even believe in the possibility of
reasoned disagreement, and as such ascribe cynical motives to those who
think about things a different way. We see this in the ongoing
veneration of facts, the ones peddled by explainer websites and data
journalists who believe themselves to be curiously post-ideological.
That the explainers and data journalists so frequently get things
hilariously wrong never invites the soul-searching youd think it
would. Instead, it all just somehow leads us to more smugness, more
meanness, more certainty from the reporters and pundits. Faced with
defeat, we retreat further into our bubble, assumptions left unchecked.
No, its the voters who are wrong.
As a direct result, we get it wrong with greater frequency. Out on the
road, we forget to ask the right questions. We cant even imagine the
right question. We go into assignments too certain that what we find
will serve to justify our biases. The publics estimation of the press
declines even further -- fewer than one-in-three Americans trust the
press, per Gallup -- which starts the cycle anew.
How Trump victory impacted the stock markets 06:39
Theres a place for opinionated journalism; in fact, its vital. But
our causal, profession-wide smugness and protestations of superiority
are making us unable to do it well.
Our theme now should be humility. We must become more impartial, not
less so. We have to abandon our easy culture of tantrums and
recrimination. We have to stop writing these know-it-all, 140-character
sermons on social media and admit that, as a class, journalists have a
shamefully limited understanding of the country we cover.
Whats worse, we dont make much of an effort to really understand, and
with too few exceptions, treat the economic grievances of Middle
America like theyre some sort of punchline. Sometimes quite literally
so, such as when reporters tweet out a photo of racist-looking Trump
supporters and jokingly suggest that they must be upset about free
trade or low wages.
We have to fix this, and the broken reasoning behind it. Theres a
fleeting fun to gang-ups and groupthink. But its not worth what we are
losing in the process.
--
Let's go Brandon!
It shouldnt come as a surprise to anyone that, with a few exceptions,
we were all tacitly or explicitly #WithHer, which has led to a certain
anguish in the face of Donald Trumps victory. More than that and more
importantly, we also missed the story, after having spent months
mocking the people who had a better sense of what was going on.
This is all symptomatic of modern journalisms great moral and
intellectual failing: its unbearable smugness. Had Hillary Clinton won,
thered be a winking we did it feeling in the press, a sense that we
were brave and called Trump a liar and saved the republic.
What does Trump's victory mean? 14:37
So much for that. The audience for our glib analysis and contempt for
much of the electorate, it turned out, was rather limited. This was
particularly true when it came to voters, the ones who turned out by
the millions to deliver not only a rebuke to the political system but
also the people who cover it. Trump knew what he was doing when he
invited his crowds to jeer and hiss the reporters covering him. They
hate us, and have for some time.
And can you blame them? Journalists love mocking Trump supporters. We
insult their appearances. We dismiss them as racists and sexists. We
emote on Twitter about how this or that comment or policy makes us feel
one way or the other, and yet we reject their feelings as invalid.
Its a profound failure of empathy in the service of endless posturing.
Theres been some sympathy from the press, sure: the dispatches from
heroin country that read like reports from colonial administrators
checking in on the natives. But much of that starts from the assumption
that Trump voters are backward, and that its our duty to catalogue and
ultimately reverse that backwardness. What can we do to get these
people to stop worshiping their false god and accept our gospel?
We diagnose them as racists in the way Dark Age clerics confused
medical problems with demonic possession. Journalists, at our worst,
see ourselves as a priestly caste. We believe we not only have access
to the indisputable facts, but also a greater truth, a system of
beliefs divined from an advanced understanding of justice.
Youd think that Trumps victory the one we all discounted too far in
advance would lead to a certain newfound humility in the political
press. But of course thats not how it works. To us, speaking broadly,
our diagnosis was still basically correct. The demons were just
stronger than we realized.
This is all a whitelash, you see. Trump voters are racist and sexist,
so there must be more racists and sexists than we realized. Tuesday
nights outcome was not a logic-driven rejection of a deeply flawed
candidate named Clinton; no, it was a primal scream against fairness,
equality, and progress. Let the new tantrums commence!
Trump's victory marks seismic shift in America 03:33
Thats the fantasy, the idea that if we mock them enough, call them
racist enough, theyll eventually shut up and get in line. Its similar
to how media Twitter works, a system where people who dissent from the
proper framing of a story are attacked by mobs of smugly incredulous
pundits. Journalists exist primarily in a world where people can get
shouted down and disappear, which informs our attitudes toward all
disagreement.
Journalists increasingly dont even believe in the possibility of
reasoned disagreement, and as such ascribe cynical motives to those who
think about things a different way. We see this in the ongoing
veneration of facts, the ones peddled by explainer websites and data
journalists who believe themselves to be curiously post-ideological.
That the explainers and data journalists so frequently get things
hilariously wrong never invites the soul-searching youd think it
would. Instead, it all just somehow leads us to more smugness, more
meanness, more certainty from the reporters and pundits. Faced with
defeat, we retreat further into our bubble, assumptions left unchecked.
No, its the voters who are wrong.
As a direct result, we get it wrong with greater frequency. Out on the
road, we forget to ask the right questions. We cant even imagine the
right question. We go into assignments too certain that what we find
will serve to justify our biases. The publics estimation of the press
declines even further -- fewer than one-in-three Americans trust the
press, per Gallup -- which starts the cycle anew.
How Trump victory impacted the stock markets 06:39
Theres a place for opinionated journalism; in fact, its vital. But
our causal, profession-wide smugness and protestations of superiority
are making us unable to do it well.
Our theme now should be humility. We must become more impartial, not
less so. We have to abandon our easy culture of tantrums and
recrimination. We have to stop writing these know-it-all, 140-character
sermons on social media and admit that, as a class, journalists have a
shamefully limited understanding of the country we cover.
Whats worse, we dont make much of an effort to really understand, and
with too few exceptions, treat the economic grievances of Middle
America like theyre some sort of punchline. Sometimes quite literally
so, such as when reporters tweet out a photo of racist-looking Trump
supporters and jokingly suggest that they must be upset about free
trade or low wages.
We have to fix this, and the broken reasoning behind it. Theres a
fleeting fun to gang-ups and groupthink. But its not worth what we are
losing in the process.
--
Let's go Brandon!