Christmas Media Wish-list

What Journalists Might be Covering, Were They Real Journalists

Democracies depend on having a few widely trusted news outlets that can objectively inform the public about current affairs. The trust which citizens have traditionally placed in these outlets was premised on a belief that their journalists are at least striving to present events in an even-handed manner. The moment they recognize that this is no longer the case, that trust is shattered—and any hope of building political life on a basis of shared facts vanishes…

The aspiration of many journalists to save democracy has not just proven counterproductive because it drove a big part of their readership away from mainstream outlets. It has also deprived Democrats of key facts they would have needed to make good strategic decisions—which, ironically, has helped to strengthen the very political forces that the journalists who were self-consciously striving to preserve democracy were trying to contain.

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Yascha Mounk

It’s that time of the year again, when we gather with family and eat food and reflect upon the things we might desire as gifts. I generally make a book list… and then mostly just use it to guide my purchases for the coming year. Here are some of titles on my 2024 wish-list:

Human Evolution - Robin Dunbar

Dominion - Tom Holland

Nothing is True and Everything is Possible - Peter Pomerantsev

Blindsight, Echopraxia - Peter Watts

I have a kind of citizen’s wish-list too. I wish people were better educated about basic economics. If you want the government to pay for schools or maternity leave or to levy environmental regulations that’s fine but those things are probably going to be very costly. I wish people were more grateful about the blessings of the West in general and the United States in particular. Perhaps more than anything, though (not more than the economics one-I would really love that) I wish we had a diligent and skeptical media. I wish that most journalists were half as probing and energetic in their investigation of departments of corrections and DEI commissions and environmental non-profits.

This issue is often represented in partisan terms, but it’s not. It’s not driven by partisan loyalties (even if many of the journalists in question secretly think it is-and will never admit that) and the negative effects of these kinds of pointed, systemic blind spots are not chiefly to empower or advantage one party or another (but we all know it’s usually the Democrats and never the Republicans). This isn’t about politicians or even issues-it’s about institutions and their natural tendency toward mission creep and corruption and abuse. In many ways our media is the best bulwark against these things. It is institutions which benefit from the state of our media, and they benefit at the cost of citizens. Contractors making many millions of dollars for providing services and rental units to illegal immigrants and Chinese spies on legislative staffs and sexual assaults within our public schools and corrupt politicians and sinister ultrapowerful global corporatists all have one thing in common: they fear a free press. In many cases they fear it more than the police, for it is the media which often alerts law enforcement that something is going on.

There are ‘approved’ issues, which you’re allowed to discuss and acknowledge and hold (somewhat) varying opinions on. Then there are ‘forbidden’ issues, for which you will pay (at least) a reputational penalty for bringing up. I never thought I’d see a movie about child sex trafficking condemned in partisan terms (for even raising the issue!) but here we are. We all know the approved issues. Let’s revisit the forbidden ones. Keep in mind: almost any acknowledgement that these are outstanding issues in our society or that they’re complex, or that outcomes could be changed by individuals making different personal decisions or that government policy has created or contributed to these problems will be dismissed with a scoff by most journalists.

The issues:

• child sex trafficking

• human trafficking (of any kind, within the U.S.)

• minority gun deaths

• minority murders

• minority educational disparities

• minority birthrates

  (…basically anything to do with minorities which doesn’t clearly establish a moral narrative with them as victims)

• demographic decline

• electoral corruption or widespread ballot issues (in the U.S. or Ukraine… it’s fine to discuss in Kenya or Venezuela)

• government waste

• government corruption

• public school-associated sexual assaults

• public school failures

• teachers’ union corruption or radicalism or incompetence

• Corruption or derangement or incompetence within ANY union… unless they’re kind of Trump-y (which, to be fair, the rank and file of which many now are); you’ll rarely see any investigations or criticism of the public sector unions though

• ANY CRIME OR MISDEED INVOLVING A TRANS PERSON IN ANY ROLE OTHER THAN VICTIM!

  

  

  

  

  

  The only folks covering these kinds of stories are small local news outlets, or The Independent, or Reduxx. They’re ALWAYS exclusive because no other outlet will publish stories about trans murderers or prisoners being assaulted. If conservatives were doing the attacking do you think there would be equivalent squeamishness? I do not.

• Any coverage of partisan or ideological machinations by federal law enforcement

• The costs of DEI/ESG

• The dynamics or incentives or organizing individuals or groups behind DEI/ESG

• ANY issues involving under-policing or inadequate police training or poor officer mental health (probably because of all that BLM stuff, I’ll wager…)

• Any suggestion of corruption or ulterior motives associated with BLM

• Any suggestion of corruption or ulterior motives associated with ANY favored narrative or friendly group or cherished individual (The Human Rights Campaign, Josh Shapiro, gun control)…

Actually-you know what? It’ll be easier to just list the issues that are NOT forbidden. You can also care about Gaza and Ukraine. You’re discouraged from caring about China. You’re highly encouraged to imbibe lessons about ‘authoritarianism’ in Hungary, even know no one knows anything about the country or its people.

Now that I look at it it’s a pretty short list. I think I would be hard-pressed to work a full-time beat as a journalist for years while staying within these boundaries, even if I believed all that stuff. God bless them, though-they soldier on.

There are approved opinions on virtually every issue and (major) country and (famous) person. You are allowed to believe that Tulsi Gabbard is compromised or sinister in some way, although I haven’t heard any evidence to that effect. You’re not really allowed to believe anything else about Tulsi, actually.

On and on it goes. It’s endlessly tiresome and is obviously stale and unsustainable. Even the folks who hew to the boundaries of belief on every one of these issues are starting to realize it… but what’s to be done? My suggestion is: do your damn jobs. Try investigating powerful and secretive interests within our society. Take that exquisite filter you built in college and honed into a sophisticated engine of doublethink-the one that asks, ‘how will my reporting sound to trans activists or to my colleagues or to Ta-Nehisi Coates?’-and throw it in the trash. Focus on how it will sound to the Oakland police officer or the Minnesota ER nurse or the South Florida contractor who will hopefully begin reading your dreck again, after you’ve rebuilt your credibility (which will take about a decade, I estimate). Focus on what the subjects of your stories will think about as they read them… and not in the sense that you’re currying favor or avoiding upsetting them! It’ll be a hell of an adjustment, I understand. But never underestimate the resilience of a modern reporter. I always say that. Just look at Taylor Lorenz!

Taylor Lorenz

Stories I’d Love to See:

Note: I think MOST people would be interested in these-that, or The Atlantic can run their 600th story about how bad Donald Trump is. You guys are the professionals, after all!

• Epstein’s intelligence ties… and his patrons and clients

  The only major sex trafficker in history without any customers and the only secretive international honeypot blackmailer without any intelligence ties… or something else? While they’re at it they can look into The Finders, a horrifying and still unresolved case of (it appears) CIA-sanctioned pedophile cultists decades ago. Rolling Stone might call you ‘Right-wing’ so it’s your decision: whether getting justice for dozens of horrifically abused children and breaking open historically evil conspiracies is worth that cost.

• Politicization of the Federal Government

  This includes investigations and suspicion lists and targeted debanking (any kind of debanking of American citizens!) and politically motivated federal indictments and audits and surveillance and the keeping of files on anyone but legitimate criminal suspects. By my count there are like 800 front-page stories here.

  The Biden Administration’s Prosecution of Dr. Eithan Haim

• The Ferguson Effect

  Do I believe that the national wave of hatred and criticism of police and slashing of their resources (in some areas) changed their behavior? I mean, wasn’t it supposed to? What were the lasting effects of these changes on crime and public safety. Shit, all you’d have to do would be interview a bunch of police working in 2020-2024 and ask them how they approach the job.

  Actually… you know what? I NEVER see interviews with police, about anything! I suspect that they might have some thoughts on law enforcement and, while I deeply respect UC student activists and their encyclopedic knowledge of policing, I would also like to hear other perspectives.

• DEI/ESG

  Who’s driving it? Who benefits? How does it work? How much does it cost? How much has it deformed university admissions and the labor market? They’re obviously having disastrous effects for many major institutions but I’ll be damned if I can find much information about these fuzzy-but potent-agendas and their implementation. Much like debanking (below) there seems to be a collective omerta around these topics across the media landscape. I’m starting to believe it’s not coincidental!

• Public Corruption
  I’ll be gentle and leave this one open-ended. I suspect that some of our tax dollars-flowing to Ukraine and to migrant services contractors and to pharmaceutical companies and to the absurd profusion of homeless (and other) nonprofits in California-are being wasted and stolen. Do I believe that all of the billions of dollars in donations to help Gazans have gone to them? Unless they’re all now living in Santa Barbara and eating better than I do (which isn’t a high bar, admittedly; I mostly survive on room temperature cans of soup and free coffee) then no-I believe some might have been diverted. NO ONE is using the word terrorism here. Get that thought right out of your heads!

• Terrorism

  There seem to be issues tied to terrorism which seem… well, underreported. In Europe they are generally tied to immigration (as is an entire huge section of social violence and sexual assault around which there’s mostly nervous silence). In China there’s a large trend of mass killings involving personal vehicles! Did you know that? You wouldn’t if you watched American news media because Chinese people driving cars can’t be tied to conservatism or gun ownership, therefore such elements are completely irrelevant. Neither can black teenagers shooting each other in Chicago, come to think of it.

  Open Thread, and also: The Dumbest Knife Law of All Time

  There have been many political mass murders and assassinations in the United States, and some were perpetrated by the ‘good’ kinds of people: trans folks and black people and Trump critics. After the tragic event is initially covered we never seem to hear much about motive or ‘radicalization’ or even see manifestos, when they exist. Not only can radicalization happen on the Left, ‘radical’ in political science refers specifically to extreme Leftists (‘reactionary’ = the hard Right). It’s not a word that journalists are probably familiar with in this context so they’ll have to take my word for it: progressives can be extreme and violent too. Especially that last example above, where a young man tried to kill that presidential candidate and former President? Do you remember that? I’d love to find out more about it!

• Misinformation

  Literally ANYONE pushing for expanding or weaponizing the concepts of misinformation or disinformation: investigate them (not criminally… I mean as reporters). I suspect a lot of them are on the payroll of intelligence agencies (or tied to Stanford- and Cambridge-based ‘research’ organizations, which is basically the same thing).

• That Most Secretive Assault in History

  This is kind of an entertainment news/celebrity item and a bit partisan for this list, but what about that one guy who’s married to a former presidential candidate who struck a woman, according to multiple professionals who witnessed it? I can’t remember his name. Let me search for ‘glowing media reviews of first husband’ or ‘redefining masculinity’ (you got that right!)… Doug Emhoff! That’s right. I heard so little about him in November I’d nearly forgot that he’s a participant in reality.

  Conversely, how about showing J. D. Vance’s beautiful wife… or his kids? I found it curious that I didn’t see or hear ONE news item even acknowledging their existence during the campaign.

  

  More Usha plz

  Actually… I think the media wants to include J. D. Vance as little as possible at this point.

• Public Schools

  Public schools are foundational institutions for the liberal project and public school teachers’ unions are foundational members of the Democratic Party coalition. Nevertheless, sexual assaults seem to be disturbingly common, results are getting worse, and costs are going up (something like $16,000 per student per year nationally, I believe. I’m researching Riker’s Island and that jail costs $438,00 per inmate per year. Government’s potential for bloat and corruption is effectively unlimited but these trends CAN be effectively addressed by the media and the voters).

  Some of the reluctance to report on public education is probably due to fallout from educational activists on the Left making things worse (equity-centered disciplinary policies, opposition to standardized texts, decolonization-oriented lessons and teaching aids, etc.) and a large share is certainly due to the horrible and persistent effects of COVID school closures, which have predictably hit black students and those who were already struggling (two groups with significant overlap) particularly hard.

  Everyone knows the media got it wrong about COVID at this point. Perhaps it’s time to just kind of own up to it so that these institutional blind spots don’t continue to pervert public policy reporting for another half-decade?

That’s my (fantasy) Christmas wish list for news media reporting. As with many gift lists, I’d be thrilled to get all of them… but I’d be quite pleased just to see my top-of-the-list item. Let’s get on it guys. Who colluded with Epstein?

Merry Christmas everyone and (though I’ll certainly post before then) Happy New Year.

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More exploration of U.S. media dynamics and reporting styles (‘Media Guides…’) coming soon!

Media Guide, Part 1: The Invisible Consensus

Media Guide, Part 2: Narrative Uber Alles

From Distortion to Farce

The Ethics of Loathing