I hate to say I told you so, but. …
Last year, when writing about why the year in media was really the year of Taylor Swift, I warned that despite the silly hand-wringing in some circles about the pop superstar’s ubiquity, we should enjoy it while it lasts.
“Next year is a presidential election year. By all indications, it will be brutal, perhaps a full-frontal assault on the media, democracy and the future of the country.”
Nailed it.
But here we are, can’t be helped. It’s time again to look at the year in media. Swift still made plenty of news in 2024, whether for wrapping up her tour or showing up at Kansas City Chiefs games to cheer on Travis Kelce. (The cheering worked; the Chiefs won their second Super Bowl in a row.) But she wasn’t the story of the year.
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Trump, Rogan and Musk were a Cerberus of misinformation
The temptation here is to go with the obvious: Donald Trump is the biggest story of the year. He survived assassination, he completed a political comeback, and he continued to threaten truth and the foundations of democracy along the way.
Or maybe Joe Rogan? Trump joined Rogan for a three-hour waste of time. Among the topics they discussed were how bull riders occasionally die, aspects of concrete, and the effect of wind on whales. And yet the Kamala Harris campaign, desperate to place some blame somewhere for her loss — anywhere but on their own decisions — bemoaned her not being on his podcast. Would it have helped? Who knows. But as they say, it couldn’t have hurt.
How about Elon Musk? He’s kind of the worst of everything about the miserable division that splits the country. He has no official title, and he’s never received a vote, yet he tanked a bill in Congress by threatening and browbeating members on X, getting Trump to go along. Who’s running this railroad?
There was some thought given to combining Trump, Rogan and Musk into a kind of Cerberus of irresponsibility who separately and together impacted the news in outsized ways. If this was just a headline count, that would probably be the right, or at least a defensible, move.
The media are the story of the year
But let’s get meta.
The big media story this year is the media. And the story often wasn’t pretty. Trump had a lot to do with that, too. He rails against responsible reporting if it’s critical of him, threatens legal action for the same reason, and has helped accelerate the decline in trust of an industry that was doing a fine job of eroding that trust all by itself.
I’m not going to go through a blow-by-blow list of mistakes media made in 2024. Nor am I going to enumerate all of the things journalists did right. The latter far outweighs the former, by the way. You know all those stories that “mainstream media is afraid to tell you about?” Yeah, well, in most cases, the only reason anyone knows about them is because mainstream media did report on them, but TikTok or your influencer of choice didn’t bother to credit them.
That said, there have been some troubling signs in the wake of Trump’s victory. Before it, too. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the Los Angeles Times, blocked his staff’s planned endorsement for Harris. Now he’s meddling further, blocking an editorial critical of Trump’s cabinet and talking about creating an AI-powered “bias meter” on editorials and opinion columns.
Then Jeff Bezos, a billionaire like Soon-Shiong, said hold my beer. Bezos, the founder and executive chairman of Amazon, as well as a host of other businesses, killed the paper’s endorsement of Harris. When Trump won, Bezos fell all over himself to congratulate him. Then Amazon gave $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.
Meanwhile, ABC paid $15 million to settle a defamation claim Trump brought against the network, a suit that many legal experts believe would have been hard for Trump to win.
A bunch of tech titans, whose businesses have a big effect on media through their various algorithms, have given up on responsibly monitoring content; Musk’s X practically exists to promote irresponsible content. Oh, and a bunch of them have given $1 million to Trump’s inaugural campaign, too.
These are the developments that made the headlines. But the real danger is more insidious. I am not one of these people who screams, “CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION” whenever the New York Times or the Washington Post aren’t hard enough on Trump in a story or a headline. (Which happens, I won’t deny.)
However, I think almost all media have fallen into a trap — not without exception, but often — of normalizing Trump’s behavior. And that’s a problem.
Winning the election doesn’t normalize Trump’s behavior
I’m sorry, but nominating Matt Gaetz to be Attorney General isn’t normal. (Gaetz dropped out not long after.) Nominating Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense isn’t normal. Pushing Kari Lake as director of Voice of America isn’t normal. Nominating Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run the Department of Health and Human Services not only isn’t normal, it’s insane.
It’s also trolling. And it should be covered as such. Saying that Trump is making “controversial” choices doesn’t cut it. It’s like calling the Grand Canyon a hole in the ground. I mean, it is true. But it’s also selling short the enormity of the situation.
I hear from a lot of Trump supporters. There seems to be a feeling among them that because Trump won the election, he can do anything he wants, that all of his lies are now magically true. This is, of course, absurd. It’s the media’s job to keep him honest to the extent that anyone or anything can.
It won’t be easy, with Trump’s influence over his followers. It won’t be perfect because journalism never is. But it has to be consistent and it has to be thorough. Standing up for the truth in the face of adversity would be a good start.
Enjoy the year of Taylor Swift:Media headlines are about to get dark
Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. X: @goodyk. Subscribe to the weekly WatchList newsletter.
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