Citing New York Magazine’s headline “Welcome to Kamalot,” a Deseret News editor concluded in a recent homepage commentary that the news media is promoting new Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris rather than covering her.
That was strange. I don’t mean the assessment of the reporting.
The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, the New Yorker, The Atlantic and others are “the media” or “the press.”
So what does this make The Deseret News, The Wall Street Journal, FOX News and National Review? Anti-press? Reality shows? The definitive secular voice of God?
The conceit, of course, is that a conservative-minded commentator is somehow different—more accurate, more honest, yet still standing out from the inferior “press”—than a liberal-minded commentator criticizing conservative coverage, whose barely concealed lip curling and eye rolling are as identical as their hairstyles and suits.
There is nothing special about the political press – let’s call it what it is – it is all top-down. You know what to expect when you turn on FOX or CNN or read The Journal or The Times.
Basically, choose your preferred truth. You would have to read a lot or watch everything if you were looking for something that comes close to reality. But so few of us are looking for it. This is the real truth.
People don’t want an unbiased media. They want the media to be biased in their favor.
Welding torch journalism
Last Saturday, the centerpiece of The Deseret’s homepage was an analysis of “abusive journalism” – that is, journalism that relies on outrage rather than more balanced reporting.
The commentary focuses largely on expert opinions on the press: New York Times columnist and author Frank Bruni and his book The Age of Grievance (2024) and other authors cover similar themes about the mistakes of journalists.
I have one minor criticism that the essay is more about commentary than reporting, even though it is about sins in reporting. The author turns to pundits like Sean Hannity for examples as if they were journalists. Hannity will tell you he is not a journalist, and rather puts himself in Rush Limbaugh’s shoes as a self-proclaimed “entertainer” – essentially cherry-flavored cheese dishes. Limbaugh was honest about that. So what the Ditto heads fell for was on them.
But the grievances described by Bruni in this retelling actually fit with many of the failings of journalism in practice, both on the left and the right: reporting that adheres to party-political stereotypes, builds up insults, stokes tensions, reflexively interprets differences between people as an imbalance of power, assumes the worst and presents only part of a story as the whole.
However, these scourges have plagued American journalism from the beginning, especially in political reporting and political commentary.
There is a part of us that reacts like a herd of cattle to midnight thunder. Reporting that appeals to this powerful force drove sales in the age of sensationalist journalism, and with the advent of social media, this reaction has only spread. Today, careers are made or destroyed by clicks.
We are also vulnerable to messages that support our instinctive “us versus them,” most obviously at the dark heart of cable news.
National media of all kinds have best understood how to address their audiences – both liberal and conservative currents in culture and politics – and each has a critical mass that local journalism cannot achieve.
Truth becomes secondary in this hierarchy. Now it’s all about attention. Either that or join the news desert. The press has moved to TikTok. This is actually a business decision, although I’m not sure we recognize the empty calories, anger as a sugar rush, what should be our dollars, which instead go to Google and Meta without us reinvesting them in journalism, a long dry run.
fairy tale; horror show
The coverage of Ballerina Farm offers some useful insights.
I turn again to the Deseret News, which exploited the story for a moral sense after a reporter from the Times of London turned a portrait of the family into a kind of feminist parable.
Of course, the business revolves around a fairy tale about family and farm life – hard work and a kind of rough luck, with the Mormon faith at its core. It has all the charm of Little House on the Prairie, with modern twists outside of Kamas.
I’m interested in how a family runs a farm at a time when family farms are as vulnerable as the local press. Almost no one makes a living from their land that way anymore. They need second jobs too.
So this family also has a thrilling story about a ballerina and offspring who discover their love of life on the farm and raise a large family while staying true to their faith. Oh, and the ballerina wins the title of Mrs. American and also does well in the Mrs. World beauty pageant, with eight children.
The story has captivated about 10 million followers on Instagram and about the same number on TikTok, and sparked countless comments about why women fall for it or not. She fits perfectly into the seam between traditional wife and cat lady, tough boss and fulfilling a man’s every whim.
The right role of a woman in life is one thing, Despite it. This incident caused a stir and cost a lot of airtime after the London Times suggested a domineering husband and the ballerina’s mother replied that this was simply not true.
So what does this have to do with the political press? Nothing. Everything! Given the peculiarities of the Electoral College, a close presidential race could well depend on it.
The family’s Faustian pact was watched by the world and commented on by commentators. And they did so precisely in line with Bruni’s list of sins. Or are these just the fault lines that draw us in?
Don Rogers is editor and publisher of The Park Record. Reach him at [email protected] or (970) 376-0745.
