Donald Trump tells the world he intends to be an authoritarian. So why won’t journalists repeat it?

Trump is a fascist. But the mainstream political press doesn’t want to say it. They want to act like 2024 is just another election year.

With their obsession with horse-race coverage, political reporters tend to judge what Trump says or does by whether his words and actions will help him politically. By doing so, the press is saying that Trump’s racism, corruption, criminality, and insane abuses of power matter only so far as his electability.

There are exceptions: major news organizations, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, have done some important stories about Trump’s dictatorial plans for a second term. But those investigative stories are drowned out by the chorus of horse-race stories — sometimes published on the same days and by the same news organizations behind more substantial coverage.

The media is sleepwalking.

I’ve often wondered how the press, both in Germany and around the world, failed to see Hitler for the monster that he was before he gained power. After Trump, I think I understand.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    2·
    6 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    In December, when his Fox News lackey, Sean Hannity, gave him an opportunity to dispel fears that he wanted dictatorial power, Trump instead offered a rare truth.

    American journalists initially viewed Hitler as little more than a German version of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, who they saw as a blustering demagogue, yet also a leader who had helped save Italy from the economic chaos of the post-World War I era.

    When Hitler first burst into German political life, the American press sought to downplay his importance by treating him as a joke; the Smithsonian notes how Newsweek called him a “nonsensical” screecher of “wild words” and that his appearance suggested “Charlie Chaplin.”

    After years of losing to social media companies in the fight for advertising and attention and fending off a constant barrage of attacks from right-wing critics who seek to discredit their journalism, major news organizations have become increasingly insular.

    A sudden surge in readership and viewership during the Trump administration has waned, while a drive to make newsrooms more diverse by hiring a wave of young progressive journalists has left older white editors embittered that the new generation has dared to challenge the status quo.

    These efforts to build protective bubbles around their organizations at a time of unprecedented volatility in the news business seem to be at the heart of the refusal by the mainstream press to get out in front of the voters and take a stand on Trump.

    The original article contains 1,626 words, the summary contains 244 words. Saved 85%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • TachyonTele@lemm.ee
    1·
    6 months ago

    I want newspapers back. Eating breakfast and skimming the news in 10-20 pages was perfect. When you were done you just left the paper there for whoever wanted to read it next. That was it. Today’s newspapers cost as much as a small paperback book and are 6 pages.

    Hold on, I’ll brb, there’s another cloud I have to shake my fist at outside.

    • hannes3120@feddit.de
      1·
      6 months ago

      The problem is that newspapers were kind of the only means to get the news in a concentrated form - now they are obsolete since everyone gets their news pretty much live and when the newspaper would be out the next morning it’s already old

  • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
    0·
    6 months ago

    Conservatives know their normal (non-conservative) friends, colleagues and family members will be cruelly oppressed and will lose fundamental human rights. But as long as conservatives maintain their own rights, they are happy with that.

    It’s bizarre and chilling to watch otherwise decent people delight in the misery of others. Conservatives truly, deeply enjoy watching vulnerable people suffer.

  • Paragone@lemmy.world
    01·
    6 months ago

    Within 4y of Trump being made ruler of the US,

    executions of leftist media will have happened.

    Natural Selection applies even in political situations.

    The “action” of ignoring/denying actuality creates the “reaction” of correction:

    No Soul/CellOfGod/ChildOfGod that is caught in a human-category-life which relies-on its assumptions & its established Entitlement, deserves other than what it gets, ( sow-reap-law, as Yehoshua “Jesus” benJoseph called it, aka karma, as the religion he absorbed during his “lost years” calls it, works ) and just as stock-markets get the corrections they deserve ( through their fakery: the greater the phoniness of their regulation, the more-savage their corrections are, it’s Nature’s LAW ), so too do political-herds.

    IF the left’s publishing-system won’t be loyal to actuality/correctness/objectivity, THEN they’re going to be … obliterated.

    Exterminated.

    It may take a few years for Trump to transform into the absolute-psychopath which is his evolution-vector’s endstate, but it will happen, if not prevented, and … you can search for articles with “the guardrails are off” or “the guardrails are gone” or however they phrased it, when the people limiting the progression-into-psychopathic-machiavellianism … left their roles.

    This is bog-standard self-amplifying positive-feedback-loop-of-corruption stuff, that human history is littered with.

    Nero, anybody??

    Arjuna’s corrupt relatives, that he hadn’t the guts to face, but had the obligation to face?

    ( Eknath Easwaran’s “The Bhagavad Gita” is the only one I recomnend in English, if anyone wants some beautiful spiritual scripture )

    Consequences won’t obey making-believing.

    US Civil War Part2’s coming, because the Confederates only pretended to surrender, and now they’re getting even with the ones who violated their supremacist religion…

    Either get out, or dig in.

    But prepare for the next decade to reduce the US’s population by about 1/3 to 2/3rds.

    It hasn’t been preventable since Reagan, possibly since the 1950’s, and it would have required one hell of great investment in quality education, nutrition, etc, in order to get the children competent in Critical Thinking as their bedrock instinct, which is the only antidote to ideological-supremacism ( replacing 1 ideological-supremacism with another doesn’t “win the war”, it just wins a battle, & gives a point to whichever ideology it was that one that point, but another ideology will try breaking the country to being owned by it, later, because they all are.

    That is the problem!

    Breaking ALL ideologies from owning/possessing countries is required, and nobody’s been creating that result!

    How could humankind survive The Great Filter, if humankind won’t commit the only victory which could save its life?? )

    Whatever, eh?

    _ /\ _