Politics

10180 readers

112 users here now

In-depth political discussion from around the world; if it's a political happening, you can post it here.

Guidelines for submissions:

Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
Social media should be a source of last resort.

These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:

Socialism

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

alyaza@beehaw.org

TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org

circularfish@beehaw.org

knokelmaat@beehaw.org

remington@beehaw.org

116

The Media Still Doesn’t Grasp the Danger of Trump (theintercept.com)

submitted 5 months ago by t3rmit3@beehaw.org to c/politics@beehaw.org

13 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Just like Hitler before him, Trump is benefiting from the fact that journalism is an incremental, daily business. Every day, reporters have to find something new to write or broadcast. Trump keeps saying dangerous and crazy things, but that’s not new. He’s said it all before. His impeachments and the January 6 insurrection happened years ago. True, he has been indicted four times and now faces up to four criminal trials, but that’s already been reported. What’s new today?

For political reporters covering the campaign, that means usually treating Trump’s authoritarian promises as “B-matter.” That’s an old newspaper phrase that refers to the background information that reporters gather about a story’s subject. B-matter is usually exiled to the bottom of an article — if not cut entirely to save space or time.

But the horrifying truth is that when Trump’s dictatorial ambitions are left on the cutting room floor as B-matter, America is in trouble.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

The article isn't about "Trump's manipulation of the media", it's about the sensationalism that revenue-driven news falls into, both by necessity and by convenience, and how that model is unequipped to handle rhetoric that is 'slow-burning'.

Trump is not playing 4D chess, he's just being his usual horrible self each day, but the media is unable to simply run "Trump still horrible" each day, so they end up treating his current horrible-ness as a new baseline after the shock wears off, which just normalizes his behavior.

It's like the inverse of the boy crying wolf, where the wolves really are attacking each day, but since everyone "knows" that, the town crier kid stops telling people the wolves are attacking unless they attack in some novel way, and over time the wolves attacking isn't even 'bad', it's just how the villagers live.