Bari Weiss is settling into a big new job at CBS News, empowering her to send Elon Musk–style memos demanding staffers justify their employment at the network. The Washington Post, which had already dumped its only Black female columnist, recently dismissed more left-leaning writers and editors while hiring several conservative ones. Skydance, the company that bought CBS News’s parent company and then installed Weiss as editor in chief, could soon also be in control of CNN. Outlets such as The New York Times and NPR, while not overtly becoming more conservative, have been chastened by Donald Trump winning a second term and often downplay the radicalism of his actions.
There’s no doubt about it: The mainstream media is moving to the right. That’s a huge problem for those of us fighting President Trump and his authoritarian aims—and one we didn’t face in his first term. At the same time, there are strategies and tactics for pro-democracy Americans to both elevate alternative news sources and force honest coverage from mainstream outlets. It is urgent we adopt those and truly understand that the media environment is a critical battlefield in combating authoritarianism.
A growing number of Americans get their news from social media. The audiences for traditional network news programs have long been stagnant; same for the Post. So the issue is not that the Post or CBS will deliver pro-Trump news that reaches a wide swath of Americans and makes the president dramatically more popular. Those outlets just don’t have that kind of reach. I am not sure the entire mainstream media does anymore.
Instead, what we should be worried about is the mainstream media’s agenda-setting and framing powers. Outlets such as ABC, CNN, and NPR often all decide something is a big deal, with nearly every outlet covering it extensively, resulting in that issue or event showing up in everyone’s social media feeds and becoming a national conversation. The media made Trump separating children from their parents at the border the issue in June 2018; same for the killing of George Floyd two years later. That’s agenda setting. Framing is the tone and tenor of that coverage. For example, in 2017, the media rightly cast Trump’s remarks after a white nationalist group marched in Charlottesville as crazy and unbecoming of a president. In Trump’s first term, mainstream media outlets often made Trump’s actions the central focus of their coverage and covered them very negatively, combining the agenda-setting and framing powers into a force against the president.
Not anymore. The media should be covering the Trump administration’s invasion of Chicago as an enormously important story, but it’s not. Trump’s comments regarding Charlottesville pale in comparison to the radical actions he takes almost daily in his second term. But the media often frames Trump’s words and actions more neutrally and calmly than before, for example giving some credence to Trump’s arguments that his deployments of the National Guard are legitimate efforts to reduce crime.
CBS’s entire operation, and the Post’s opinion pages, now under the leadership of Trump-sympathetic leaders, are likely to go even further in this direction, not using their agenda-setting and framing roles to be a check on Trump. This media shift removes a huge weapon from the arsenal of anti-authoritarian forces, one that was very helpful from 2017 to 2020.
“I think what’s going to be left of mainstream media in a couple of years is very consolidated and largely aligned with Trump,” Arkadi Gerney, who advises Democratic politicians and left-leaning organizations on how to combat Trump, said in a recent edition of Right Now, the show I host. “It doesn’t mean that all the pillars of media are falling apart.… But it’s a real challenge.”
So what can be done? First of all, average voters, activists, elites, and left-leaning politicians need to adjust their media consumption. CBS News and the Post, in the midst of Trump attempting to become America’s dictator, have intentionally shifted their coverage and leadership to be more favorable to him. Move on from those outlets. You can keep subscribing to the Post or watching 60 Minutes for the occasional big investigative story they break. But outlets such as The Guardian provide comprehensive daily news coverage that isn’t trying to appease Trump. Add those to your daily or hourly news consumption, and drop outlets or at least sections (Post Opinions) that aren’t fully committed to defending democracy.
There is nothing new about the mainstream media either not forcefully defending democracy or undermining it. Because of Watergate and other instances in recent American history, we think of the mainstream media as a democratizing force in the United States and a check on autocratic politicians. But as Kathy Roberts Forde, a journalism professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, explained in a recent Right Now episode, news organizations have been part of “antidemocratic projects” throughout American history, mostly notably Southern newspapers that defended Jim Crow segregation. We can have a successful pro-democracy movement in America without CBS News—and it appears we must.
Second, we need a change within the media itself. Many left-leaning outlets have traditionally offered alternative framing of the news, but not an alternative agenda. So those outlets cover the same stories as the mainstream media but with a more liberal perspective. That’s not the right approach for today. The mainstream media is failing (intentionally) in what stories it chooses to cover and how much: i.e., agenda setting. They are refusing to offer coverage (or the volume needed) on stories that make Trump look like the authoritarian that he is. So liberal outlets should not just offer opinion pieces and analysis of the events that traditional news outlets are covering but should also have their own agenda for which events are worth covering and how much. Pro-democracy news organizations should be ones that editorialize more in favor of democracy; they should also be ones that cover threats to democracy more rigorously than other outlets.
For example, TNR is known for its essays and opinions. But I increasingly find the website’s Breaking News section valuable because I can learn the newest radical thing Trump did without the equivocating I would see in the Times or CNN.
Third, people in the anti-Trump camp should embrace a certain kind of media criticism. While CBS and the Post are intentionally moving right and are probably fine with losing some anti-Trump consumers, I’m not sure that the rest of the mainstream media is in that same place. They want to appear neutral but not lose audience share. So they are susceptible to being influenced and shamed into more honest journalism.
Here’s how to do it. When their coverage is criticized, mainstream editors and reporters will quickly cite stories and paragraphs that portray Trump negatively. This isn’t hard: Trump is one of the most dishonest and unethical politicians in American history. Of course news outlets can find some stories they have done that are critical of him! What these reporters are ignoring is that the headlines, social posts, and first few paragraphs of their pieces are often framed in ways designed not to offend conservatives. They want to cast themselves as not liberal to conservative readers but claim to liberals they are taking on Trump. We can’t let them have it both ways. NPR, the Times, and other outlets should be flooded with criticism of not the stories they select to cover, which are generally fine, but the tone and tenor of them, which often goes out of its way to cast Trump as acting presidential in the same way that George W. Bush, Barack Obama, or Joe Biden did.
None of my suggestions come close to addressing the calamity we face right now. One of the main ways autocrats gain power is by capturing and controlling the news in their countries. That is happening here too, like so many other signs of authoritarianism. Bari Weiss isn’t qualified to be a correspondent at CBS, never mind editor in chief. But at least now, Americans can choose non-Trump-friendly news, other news outlets can cover the stories that the Trump-friendly outlets won’t, and many important news organizations don’t want to be too pro-Trump. News appeasing Trump has gone mainstream, but we still have other media.
The post The Mainstream Media Is Moving Right. Here’s What We Can Do About It. appeared first on New Republic.
