Matthew Yglesias believes he and those with political beliefs similar to his are being victimized by the major media outlets:
The reason is something I’ve dubbed “the hack gap†over the years, and it’s one of the most fundamental asymmetries shaping American politics. While conservatives obsess over the (accurate) observation that the average straight news reporter has policy views that are closer to the Democratic Party than the Republican Party, the hack gap fundamentally does more to structure political discourse.
The hack gap explains why Clinton’s email server received more television news coverage than all policy issues combined in the 2016 election. It explains why Republicans can hope to get away with dishonest spin about preexisting conditions. It’s why Democrats are terrified that Elizabeth Warren’s past statements about Native American heritage could be general election poison in 2020, and it’s why an internecine debate about civility has been roiling progressive circles for nearly two years even while the president of the United States openly praises assaulting journalists.
The hack gap has two core pillars. One is the constellation of conservative media outlets — led by Fox News and other Rupert Murdoch properties like the Wall Street Journal editorial page, but also including Sinclair Broadcasting in local television, much of AM talk radio, and new media offerings such as Breitbart and the Daily Caller — that simply abjure anything resembling journalism in favor of propaganda.
The other is that the self-consciousness journalists at legacy outlets have about accusations of liberal bias leads them to bend over backward to allow the leading conservative gripes of the day to dominate the news agenda. Television producers who would never dream of assigning segments where talking heads debate whether it’s bad that the richest country on earth also has millions of children growing up in dire poverty think nothing of chasing random conservative shiny objects, from “Fast & Furious†(remember that one?) to Benghazi to the migrant caravan.
I have two questions. First, can anyone parse this sentence for me?
One is the constellation of conservative media outlets — led by Fox News and other Rupert Murdoch properties like the Wall Street Journal editorial page, but also including Sinclair Broadcasting in local television, much of AM talk radio, and new media offerings such as Breitbart and the Daily Caller — that simply abjure anything resembling journalism in favor of propaganda.
Does he mean that Breitbart and the Daily Caller “abjure anything resembling journalism” which I could potentially see or does he mean that all “conservative media outlets” do so which I think is an exaggeration?
The second is can you give me an example of the New York Times, the Washington Post, or the Associated Press bending “over backward to allow the leading conservative gripes of the day to dominate the news agenda”? Or does that just mean they’re being reported?
I think this piece is ultimately a failure of introspection.
One example: He says of the Clinton email scandal:
“The essence was, rather, the bizarre and obviously false claim that the Clinton email scandal was important.”
It was important enough for the FBI to open a formal criminal investigation. For Yglesias to assert that it wasn’t important is what is bizarre. A Presidential candidate that is part of a federal criminal investigation is a big deal, no matter what that investigation is about.
He also ignores the how badly Clinton handled the situation. The fact is it became important because of Clinton’s own actions and mistakes and misjudgments, not because of any right-wing conspiracy. No one forced Clinton to run on a platform of competence and experience only to have her screw up badly enough to require FBI involvement, make multiple false public statements, etc. This was entirely an own-goal.
And I have a hard time believing Democrats, including Ygelsias, would pass up an opportunity to punish a GoP candidate’s mistakes and own-goals to the fullest extent possible regardless of perceived and subjective importance of the issue.
I remain open to being persuaded otherwise but in the end I think he’s complaining the NYT, WaPo, and other media outlets are insufficiently biased.
I find it difficult to think of any media outlet that runs front page editorials or op-eds against political candidates as being under the thumb of the supporters of those candidates.
The symmetric argument is that important news stories cannot make it past media gatekeepers.
I think that the Benghazi coverage and Obama as a Kenyan are good examples. The GOP had 8 investigations, and everyone of them got coverage. At some point, especially since they weren’t find anything new, maybe you stop covering stuff. Maybe after number 4 or 5? It let that remain a topic for the full 4 years of Obama’s second term. They carried out the birth certificate stuff even though it was clear it was a non issue. Look at the current violence meme running around. The antifas throw eggs and it is covered as major violence. The abortion people throw bricks and it gets back page coverage in the local papers. Look at everything that happens on a college campus. Gets carried like big news.
Did Clinton’s email story deserve more coverage than any other story that year?
Steve
Steve,
If Congress does an investigation, it’s going to get news coverage because it’s Congress, even if the investigation is politically motivated. For the same reason, the press covers Trump’s tweets because they come from the President, even though a lot of that coverage and “analysis” is just plain stupid and irrelevant.
The media goes after what’s shiny, not what’s objectively or subjectively important. That’s why there is a news cycle with the old outrage du jour quickly forgotten in favor of whatever is shiny today.
Yglesias’ complaint boils down to his perception that “conservatives” are better at exploiting this process thanks to the “institutional clout” of a well-organized conservative media. He might be right about that – I honestly don’t know. Liberals have been complaining about the conservative media for decades. His laundry list of anecdotes coming from his own self-admitted left of center position doesn’t prove anything. And that’s really all he has – the piece has not conclusion or solution except to scold the media for not covering the policy issues he thinks are important. But he doesn’t appear to realize that not everyone is a policy wonk like him or that other people can think things are important when he does not. Hence the Clinton email example.
And frankly, it’s pretty easy to rewrite a lot of his argument from a right-of-center perspective and provide counterexamples. It’s not like the media today is overly focused on the broad policy questions that intrigue wonks like Yglesias – they’re too busy wrongly interpreting the meaning of Trump tweets, overusing the word “problematic” and providing mostly shallow coverage of the outrage du jour – IOW they are still mostly going after the shiny.
I would just add that is why I gave up long ago on much of news, particularly the cable channels and TV news generally (actually, I’ve pretty much given up on TV completely). It’s why I finally gave up on OTB after more than a decade of active readership and it’s why I cultivate my information sources pretty carefully. There’s a lot of garbage out there. I think I’m able to do that effectively because of my training, but I realize there’s a strong possibility I’m just creating my own safe and ignorant bubble.
I’m always fascinated by these sort of equivalency arguments. Fox is the favorite whipping boy, especially Sean Hannity. Yet Hannity is an unabashed partisan. He will tell you so. Many will say the same about T Carlson and ingraham. And yet a standard feature of their show is to bring on 1 or 2 opposing view guests each night. But Baer, M Carleson, Smith and Cavuto play it pretty straight.
MSNBC? Starting with the coffee couple. It’s non-stop partisan hacks all day long. CNN? The only straight one I can even think of is Tapper, but look at his resume some time. The rest of the day is non-stop panels of 3-5 people Trump bashing. WaPo. NYT. AP? You can’t be serious. NBC, ABC, CBS………. don’t make me laugh.
I don’t read Breitbart or Caller. But we aren’t trying to put them in the same league are we?
Looks to me like Yglesias just wanted to go on a good rant.
The media universe…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJLeBM6-AaM
Yglesias tells the whole story in the beginning. Hillary calls Trump voters deplorable. Then Trump calls every Democrat crazy. Trump voters will never ever stop obsessing about that horrifying woman calling them deplorable. They will go their graves talking about that. Outside of point scoring, none of the Democratic crazies cared enough to know it happened. I don’t care. Yglesias doesn’t care. You can’t have an equal relationship when one side flips out and the doesn’t care.
There are two components to what Thomas Frank calls the professional class. One, is of course, a set of cultural values or tastes identified as liberal. The other is a set of careerist values necessary for their self-advancement.
What Yglesias ( man whose career very much reflects the careerist values over the cultural) is really doing is continuing that behavior. In the past, when he has seen it as advantageous to defend the existence of brutal working conditions in undeveloped countries, or imperialism, he has done that. He made his way to Vox by making every blog he writes an ode to the greatness of the Obama Administration, even when it acted in the most immoral, retrograde and merciless fashion imaginable. Today, he sees it as advantageous to reflect “liberal values” and burnish his #resistance cred by going after his counterparts on the Right, who are admittedly every bit horrible as he.
This is, as an aside, precisely why socialists don’t trust liberals.
The way I characterized it occasionally was that every post looked like a writing sample for a job with the administration.
Yglesias knows more than most anybody about how bad the pundit class is.
I agree with Andy here. Her creation of a private e-mail server violated various laws or was intended to circumvent laws, either because she was running State for personal gain or in order to help her become President. It was important. That and her response was the primary reason she lost my vote.
MM,
A lot of people are making the comparison between “deplorable” and “crazy.” But, the timing, context in which they were used and the meaning of the words and what their use implies are very different. The comparison is not a good one.
Here’s one example – everyone remembers President Obama’s “bitter clingers” speech, but no one remembers Obama’s Republican “swamp of crazy” speech. And the reasons for that are largely the same as the reasons why deplorables got traction and stating that voting for Democrats is crazy did not.
Should I assume that Hillary Clinton was the only Democrat to think that a large number of Americans are deplorable?
If so, should I assume that Mitt Romney was the only Republican to think that 47% of Americans are too much trouble to be bothered about?
IMO, if one were to list all the left-leaning news media and their ardent supporters (such as Hollywood & academia) it would be much longer and overwhelming than conservative-appealing Fox, talk radio and blogs such as Breitbart or the daily caller. As has been cited by media analysts, over 90% of Trump reports are negative. Even Jeff Greenberg recently criticized his old news employer, saying they have devolved into nothing more than panels sitting around criticizing the prez rather than impartially focusing on the news of the day.
As for my sources of information, I have migrated over to televised business news and various internet sites. Talking heads and videos of screaming mobs are neither appealing nor informative.