The Media Malpractice That Sent America Tumbling Into Trumpism

[Mr. Sparkle]

We are now one year into Donald Trump’s second term, and something strange is happening in political media. A lot of people who spent years insisting that the so-called “alarmists” were being hysterical have started, tentatively, to admit that maybe they got it wrong. Last April, David Brooks published a long essay in The Atlantic titled “I Should Have Seen This Coming,” in which he acknowledged that he’d underestimated how much conservatism had become pure anti-liberal reaction. Jon Stewart, who spent the early weeks of the second Trump administration chiding liberals for being too quick to use the word “fascism,” eventually conceded on air: “I did not think we would get this authoritarian this fast. I really didn’t. I’m sorry. Who could’ve known? Maybe if somebody out there had yelled at me on Bluesky about this, I would have known. But no one did. Except every day. In all caps.”

Political scientist Corey Robin, who had spent years dismissing those who called MAGA fascist, admitted on an October podcast: “I was skeptical coming into this second administration that they would be able to wield the kind of power that people feared they would wield. I have since turned out to be wrong.” And then there are the journalists who covered the 2024 campaign, who are now looking back at their own work with what might charitably be called discomfort. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, especially after listening to a recent podcast that crystallized something for me. On the one-year anniversary of Trump’s return to power, Reuters dropped the latest episode of its On Assignment podcast. The guest was Sally Buzbee, the outlet’s North American editor, who joined Reuters in December 2024 after leaving The Washington Post. Host Jonah Green asked her about covering the first year of Trump’s second term, and Buzbee offered this reflection:

" I think it is actually, many presidents are very, very active in their first year in office. But I think, it is fair to say that this is sort of historically ambitious, energetic, and just a real agenda. I don’t think in those first few days, we understood what an organized agenda they had for his second term, but now we understand that."

We didn’t understand. Now we understand. I found myself rewinding that part of the episode a few times because I wasn’t sure I’d heard it correctly. Buzbee, who spent years running one of the country’s most important newspapers and now oversees political coverage for one of the world’s largest news agencies, was saying that the press didn’t grasp how organized Trump’s second-term agenda would be. That it took watching the administration in action for journalists to finally get it.

more... https://newrepublic.com/article/205913/media-malpractice-trumpism-project-2025

[gopiscrap]

1. Dumb fucking MSM

all of those trump humper fuckers should be hung as traitors!!!

[UpInArms]

2. JFC - they put out the agenda! Project 2025

and the "journalists" kept "believing" the liar they wouldn't call a LIAR because ...

just fucking stupid ... shm

[TommyT139]

10. People still don't believe P2025

...most notably what rethugs say they are planning to do to the trans community members, gays, lesbians, and bi people linked to same sex partners.

Not just ending gay marriage -- imprisonment.

[UpInArms]

12. First they came for ...

Peeps better start believing

[TommyT139]

15. Yep

And these are Dems I'm referring to.

Which kind of proves the tactic works - chipping off the margins of a a coalition of support.

I'm convinced that a Democrat who doesn't support trans folk -- regardless of their understanding of whatever "issues" are current topics -- simply doesn't hold the values that will get us through this.

[DSandra]

35. Even though more than 50% of Project 2025 has already been implemented?

And these people have the gall to bother transgender people on "biological truth" when they do whatever they can to deny the actual wider truth!

[erronis]

17. For all their on-air polish, the MSM "journalists" are "just fucking stupid". Agree.

[DSandra]

36. Work is just a performance for too many people

"The most important thing in your job is looking the part!"

[erronis]

38. Slicked-back hair and a square jaw --- you're the next Sec'y of Wor

[Hey Joe]

42. I know, right?

I’m not a journalist, but I could read the writing on the wall for Christ sake’s!
Didn’t any of these shills read about Project 2025 or know anything about the Heritage Foundation and the horrible people backing this shit up!
Beyond useless…..

[enough]

3. How could they not have seen, when it was obvious during the campaign

and from day one of the term. And especially given the impunity granted by SCOTUS.

[llmart]

22. Or the fact that he actually TOLD us he would be a "dictator from day one".

Duh! I guess these stellar "journalists" just told themselves "oh, that's just Trump being Trump."

As an aside, I have a niece who was a big city TV "journalist" for a couple years and she is one of the most gullible people I've ever met. I have no idea what her degree is in though she does have one. If any DUer has a journalism degree that's decades old, I can tell you from experience that how journalism is taught these days is laughable. My office at the university was directly across from the journalism classroom and I would just shake my head at the pablum they were teaching. It didn't used to be like that.

[DSandra]

32. There was quite a lot of talk about Project 2025

And yet somehow they all missed that?

[cynical_idealist]

43. denial is a powerful drug

[BlueTsunami2018]

4. Everyone is so full of shit.

They knew exactly what these people were going to do and what they are. Project 2025 was quite clear, Piss’ own words were quite clear. Anyone saying they didn’t think this would happen is flat out lying. They’re all ruling class shills and fascist enablers. Scum, every last one of them.

[DSandra]

33. America has way too many scumbags

Including in the media.

[dickthegrouch]

5. Apparently dropped can have diametrically opposite meanings

Reuters dropped the latest episode of its On Assignment podcast.

I had at first thought that meant “yanked its latest episode”. After rereading several times it actually means “released” the episode.
How confusing. Poor choice of words.

If they’d done their homework and put on the filter of chump lying about EVERYTHING, they’d have known just like we did. Complete cop out to claim ignorance now. Call it what it was: intellectual and professional laziness.

[littlemissmartypants]

11. It's record industry lingo. Think, drop a new song/record. That's where the slang comes from. nt

[erronis]

39. It's different. Reuters dropping a report means publishing it. CBS dropping one means spiking it.

They're all in the business of playing with words anyway. To hell with the meanings and the impacts on lives!

[Kid Berwyn]

6. Shut 'em up with a label: "Conspiracy Theorist"

Still, I tried.

From May 2016:

Exposing Trump's Decades of Deep Ties to Organized Crime

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10027855824

[love_katz]

29. Bookmarked and highly recommend.

[erronis]

40. That's a great piece from 2016. The Alternet page is no longer available, so a good historical record.

"Exposing Trump's Decades of Deep Ties to Organized Crime"

Lots of great comments and many of our current community.

[angrychair]

7. Nothing else matters but this

From the Epstein Files that were released but then hidden again by the DOJ:

“Jeffrey Epstein would bring the children in and trump would auction them off. He measured the children’s vulva and vaginas by entering a finger and rated the children on tightness,” the complaint reads.

If that isn't the only thing we care about then we have already given up and given in as a nation.

[llmart]

24. That thought makes me want to vomit.

[Aviation Pro]

8. Jesus H Christ - Project 2025

All 922 pages of it.

[DSandra]

34. Too many people had their head in the sand

And an apology will not cut it for all the consequences we have to deal with now.

[SamKnause]

9. I am not a journalist.

I saw it coming.

Many of us saw it coming.

It seems none of you have the qualifications to be journalists.

Our country will pay dearly for your mistakes and cowardness.

[ColoringFool]

13. Who Could Have KNOWN, Mr. Stewart?!?! MILLIONS OF DEMOCRATS, YOU #%*&$!!

I ABOMINATE DISINGENUOUSNESS!!

His TV ratings depended on "not knowing."

[Cirsium]

25. There we go

His TV ratings depended on "not knowing."

[mdbl]

14. The MSM doesn't deserve any "oops we were wrong" moments

If they were that stupid not to see this 10 years ago then they don't deserve to be read or heard.

[NoMoreRepugs]

16. Pseudo journalists making dumbass cover their asses declarations.

[markodochartaigh]

18. I think that most people who live in ivory towers

whether on the left bank or on the right, especially if they were raised in that rarefied atmosphere, really have to struggle to overcome their privilege to see and to feel what is really going on in the world. Studies have shown that the more money one has the less empathy one has.
To me it seems that the first step in understanding reality is to acknowledge that the concerns of those who will be most harmed by a problem are valid.

[Cirsium]

27. Maybe the other way around?

"The more money one has the less empathy one has."

Maybe the less empathy one has the more likely one is to succeed in a cut-throat anti-social capitalist world?

I have often thought that those who are unwilling or unable to treat others as equals are the ones who are motivated to gain dominance over others and are therefore the ones most likely to "succeed."

[Soul_of_Wit]

37. A corollary of this is that most CEOs are sociopaths (n/m)

[cachukis]

19. The journalists are too busy being journalists.

That keeps them from studying the big picture.
That they rarely ask the pertinent questions we would is an indicator.
They are just not doing the research necessary to connect the dots.
You get some good analysis from the 4,000 word articles, but do journalists actually read them or are they so into the hunt for a sound bite?

[Initech]

20. It started with repealing the Fairness Doctrine.

And allowing one side to run absolutely rampant with false, unchecked and unhinged propaganda, which gave birth to Fox News as a result. Industry consolidation certainly didn't help things either.

[GiqueCee]

21. BINGO!

The conservative long game has always been superior. Our overpaid and undereducated "Consultants" should start updating their resumés, and candidates should start doing their own damned homework by listening to their constituents instead of dismissing them until the next election cycle.

[leftstreet]

45. Congress has had 40 YEARS to repeal it

Not a peep

[valleyrogue]

47. You mean reinstate it, don't you?

The Reagan administration back in 1987 didn't renew it.

Fox "News" and Murdoch were a decade later.

[leftstreet]

49. lol yes. Should have said "fix it!"

[JHB]

23. They still dance around a fundamental truth: Liberals have been right about the Right for decades

And they'll still bend backwards to be able to prove to never-satisfied people that they don't have "liberal bias".

[pfitz59]

26. Every Trump supporting 'journalist'

should have their 'press' privileges permanently revoked. Anyone of a certain age knows exactly what Trump is. I've wirnessed 50 years of his bullshit and bluster.

[rampartd]

28. anyone who has bought a condo or a used car knows trump instinctively.

i have never believed a word of it.

[doc03]

30. I swear there is better news coverage on The Daily Show than

on most news reports.

[DSandra]

31. Trump showed the signs back in 2020-21. Masked militarized federal police in Washington without IDs...

Federal police abducting protesters, not respecting the election results of the 2020 election...

Not just that, we already partially went down this road with the Bush Administration with a relatively lite version of fascism (complete with Muslims as the scapegoat, nationalism, militarism, and the Patriot Act and the start of the surveillance state), thus Republicans showed for some time how they very much wanted fascism.

[JHB]

41. People who did know and tried to say were squelched and blacklisted

Liberals all through the 90's through today.

Even centrists when they spoke the truth out in public. Think of Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann when they published that the problem wasn't "Congress", the problem was Republicans. Prior to that, Ornstein had been a regular on political talking-head shows. After? He just vanished. Invites dropped by well over 90%. That just wasn't an acceptable subject to The High Holy Church of "Both Sides".

[W_HAMILTON]

44. "No single raindrop thinks it's responsible for the flood."

I hope the author included their own publication as part of said media malpractice because The New Republic also ran its fair share of anti-Kamala/anti-Democratic pieces prior to that supremely consequential election.

[dlilafae]

46. What the journalists said ...

... was willfully blind ignorance. They saw it, and decided to look away. We were all given (and gave), plenty of warnings!

[valleyrogue]

48. I saw this nonsense way back in the 1960s, with Nixon

and his "Southern Strategy." Those were the first signs, but then the GOP gradually came under the grip of the Birchers, personified by Ronald Reagan. Paul Weyrich and his religious nutjobs expanded the radical right (NOT so-called conservative) support from A to B. It has been downhill ever since.

[hydrolastic]

50. Thanksgiving at my grandmothers house 1973

About 10 or 12 people my aunts boy friend I dont remember his name (John) spent an hour talking about political stuff with my sister and I. I was 12 anyways as dinner was getting ready my grandmother who never admonished anybody even a little said to John "We dont want to listen to that crap! its time to eat" he was talking about how we just waste money and give it to other countries. That we need to move the us embassy to Jerusalem to "show them who is in charge " I had forgotten about it for decades then In 'trump one" he did it and I kept thinking "where did I hear that before" All of this has been around for a long time. The Birchers finally got to be in charge!

[valleyrogue]

52. If you change the hairstyles and clothing and replace Nixon with Trump,

the famous sitcom All in the Family would fit right in with today.

The more things change...

[Cosmocat]

51. Two things

1) "We" are almost always right, are flat out dismissed and then demagogued and ultimately proven right.

"We" said Iraq was a lie and going to be a disaster. "We" were called terrorist supporters and whatever all else for several years until it was clear there was not cause go into Iraq and also that it was a complete disaster. Literally no one was every held to account for it, and the Ds/Libs sure as hell never were acknowledged as being right about it.

2) They always, ALWAYS cheer on the Rs and marginalize the Ds on the big issues.

This has been going on my entire adult life, going on half a century, and it has enabled Rs to grow less connected to reality and reason, to more be increasingly brash, irrational, immoral and flat out unhinged.

THIS is what enabled DT's rise.