The media has no clothes

My co-blog lord Trevor had an excellent piece to begin this week on the legacy media caterwauling over Democrats having the gall to value social media content creators over their august personages. It was the most glaring indication of their lack of utility to the Democratic ticket of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

So now? They're resorted to mafia-type blackmail. "Do interviews, or we will keep making you a target."

However, this response to Wiggly Weigel encapsulates the media's problem:

The media has no teeth now. Why should she play by the rules when Trump doesn't have to play by them and pays no price. So you can just lie repeatedly to the press and that's an interview? The box is checked?

— Michael Salfino (@MichaelSalfino) August 27, 2024

Yes. The media managed to push out President Joe Biden. It reveled in its power to force out an incumbent from seeking reelection. It felt like Walter Cronkite in 1968. Now Democrats would have to kowtow to them if they wanted any chance at beating Donald Trump.

Pres. Biden was already keeping the media at arm's length. However, he was still seen through the prism of the legacy media. He was unable to make the clean break that Vice President Harris has been able to do.

VP Harris has laid out a clear strategy for the month she's been the presumptive nominee. She has replaced the legacy media with a massive outreach to the content creators from which many get their news. No, they're not dancing on TikTok. Organizations like Meidas Touch are doing real journalism. But what they don't do is perform both-sides "objectivity". They are very subjective in their outlook. They know the assignment: That's to protect democracy and their own rights. They're not the ones writing for an elite audience. Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Inquirer captured their mindset perfectly:

The Chicago-based media critic Mark Jacob, a retired veteran editor of that city’s Tribune and Sun Times, nailed it Monday with a piece headlined “Mainstream media on a path to irrelevance.” Jacob has harsh words for how reporters have covered the race, writing that “too many political journalists are marinating in the Washington cocktail culture, writing for each other and for their sources — in service to the political industry, not the public.”

Legacy media, to quote a phrase, is lost in smelling its own farts, and thinking them to be a bouquet of roses. They treat the abuse they receive online as an indication that they are doing something right. But they're not. The media has two, interrelated jobs: To inform, and by doing so to protect democracy. They have abjured both tasks. The content creators live in the neighborhoods and towns which legacy media views with disdain. They answer to and engage with their viewers and readers. They respond to their concerns and fears. Legacy media stopped doing that long ago.

And because it has, it is now distrusted by all sides. And that is a very bad thing for democracy. But nothing is eternal. Legacy media will either adapt, or be replaced by something else. And it will be its own doing.

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