{"id":203,"date":"2024-12-31T12:43:16","date_gmt":"2024-12-31T12:43:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2024\/12\/31\/trump-dominated-headlines-but-hes-not-the-biggest-story-of-2024-opinion-the-arizona-republic\/"},"modified":"2024-12-31T12:43:16","modified_gmt":"2024-12-31T12:43:16","slug":"trump-dominated-headlines-but-hes-not-the-biggest-story-of-2024-opinion-the-arizona-republic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2024\/12\/31\/trump-dominated-headlines-but-hes-not-the-biggest-story-of-2024-opinion-the-arizona-republic\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump dominated headlines, but he’s not the biggest story of 2024 | Opinion – The Arizona Republic"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

I hate to say I told you so, but. \u2026<\/p>\n

Last year, when writing about why the year in media was really the year of Taylor Swift<\/a>, I warned that despite the silly hand-wringing in some circles about the pop superstar\u2019s ubiquity, we should enjoy it while it lasts.<\/p>\n

\u201cNext 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nailed it.<\/p>\n

But here we are, can\u2019t be helped. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Need a break?<\/strong> Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.<\/a><\/p>\n

Trump, Rogan and Musk were a Cerberus of misinformation<\/h2>\n

The temptation here is to go with the obvious: Donald Trump is the biggest story of the year. He survived assassination<\/a>, he completed a political comeback<\/a>, and he continued to threaten truth<\/a> and the foundations of democracy along the way.<\/p>\n

Or maybe Joe Rogan? Trump joined Rogan for a three-hour waste of time<\/a>. 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 \u2014 anywhere but on their own decisions \u2014 bemoaned her not being on his podcast. Would it have helped? Who knows. But as they say, it couldn\u2019t have hurt.<\/p>\n

How about Elon Musk<\/a>? He\u2019s kind of the worst of everything about the miserable division that splits the country. He has no official title, and he\u2019s never received a vote, yet he tanked a bill in Congress by threatening and browbeating members on X, getting Trump to go along. Who\u2019s running this railroad?<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The media are the story of the year<\/h2>\n

But let\u2019s get meta.<\/p>\n

The big media story this year is the media. And the story often wasn\u2019t pretty. Trump had a lot to do with that, too. He rails against responsible reporting if it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m 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 \u201cmainstream media is afraid to tell you about?\u201d Yeah, well, in most cases, the only reason anyone knows about them is because mainstream media did<\/em> report on them, but TikTok or your influencer of choice didn\u2019t bother to credit them.<\/p>\n

That said, there have been some troubling signs in the wake of Trump\u2019s victory. Before it, too. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the Los Angeles Times, blocked his staff\u2019s planned endorsement for Harris. Now he\u2019s meddling further, blocking an editorial critical of Trump\u2019s cabinet and talking about creating an AI-powered \u201cbias meter\u201d on editorials and opinion columns.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s endorsement of Harris. When Trump won, Bezos fell all over himself to congratulate him. Then Amazon gave $1 million to Trump\u2019s inaugural fund.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s X practically exists to promote<\/em> irresponsible content. Oh, and a bunch of them have given $1 million to Trump\u2019s inaugural campaign, too.<\/p>\n

These are the developments that made the headlines. But the real danger is more insidious. I am not one of these people who screams, \u201cCANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION\u201d whenever the New York Times or the Washington Post aren\u2019t hard enough on Trump in a story or a headline. (Which happens, I won\u2019t deny.)<\/p>\n

However, I think almost all media have fallen into a trap \u2014 not without exception, but often \u2014 of normalizing Trump\u2019s behavior. And that\u2019s a problem.<\/p>\n

Winning the election doesn’t normalize Trump’s behavior<\/h2>\n

I\u2019m sorry, but nominating Matt Gaetz to be Attorney General isn\u2019t normal. (Gaetz dropped out not long after.) Nominating Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense isn\u2019t normal. Pushing Kari Lake<\/a> as director of Voice of America isn\u2019t normal. Nominating Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run the Department of Health and Human Services not only isn’t normal, it’s insane.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also trolling. And it should be covered as such. Saying that Trump is making \u201ccontroversial\u201d choices doesn\u2019t cut it. It\u2019s like calling the Grand Canyon a hole in the ground. I mean, it is true. But it\u2019s also selling short the enormity of the situation.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s the media\u2019s job to keep him honest to the extent that anyone or anything can.<\/p>\n

It won\u2019t be easy, with Trump\u2019s influence over his followers. It won\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

Enjoy the year of Taylor Swift:<\/strong>Media headlines are about to get dark<\/a><\/p>\n

Reach Goodykoontz at<\/em>\u00a0bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com<\/a>. Facebook:<\/em>\u00a0facebook.com\/GoodyOnFilm<\/a>. X:<\/em>\u00a0@goodyk<\/a>. Subscribe to<\/em>\u00a0the weekly WatchList newsletter<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I hate to say I told you so, but. \u2026 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\u2019s ubiquity, we should enjoy it while it lasts. \u201cNext year is a presidential election […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":204,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}