The News Media Have Learned Nothing

The election is just days away, and reporters are making the worst possible choices.

Back when I used to teach courses in media and politics, much of which involved exploring the way news media fail the public, I’d always stress to my students that whenever the media as a whole get a story wrong or fall short, there are always journalists somewhere getting it right. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mitigate the harm done when all the major news organizations stampede together after the most misleading, distracting, irrelevant, and just plain idiotic stories, tossing aside any concern about their mission of informing the public and enabling democracy to function. 

And here we go again. 

Yes, I’m talking about the frenzy over Joe Biden, who is not currently running for president, saying the word “garbage” in a Zoom call. If you are a consumer of newspapers, TV news, NPR, or any other elite mainstream news outlets, by now you’ve seen lots of stories about this non-story, in which Biden stumbled over his words as he criticized the speakers at Donald Trump’s recent hate rally in Madison Square Garden, attempting to say that their comments were “garbage.” But if you truncate what he said, remove it from context, ascribe preposterous motives to him, and then lie about every element of it, then you can say he called all Trump supporters “garbage.” And we’re off to the races.

The least important story gets the most coverage

So here’s what happened: Biden said this mangled thing, though what he meant was clear. Republicans then lied about it and pretended to be outraged, as they do about one thing or another on a near-daily basis. And reporters were faced with a decision. How much credence should we give to the fake outrage? Is it worth mentioning in passing, but not worth writing entire stories about? Does it merit one or two stories, but no more than that? Or is it a political five-alarm fire, and we should assign multiple reporters to flood the zone on it? 

The latter is what they chose. I first realized how insane this was already getting Wednesday morning, when the AM installment of Politico’s Playbook newsletter arrived in my inbox. The newsletter is a roundup of every political story that its authors consider important that day; each story is usually given a paragraph or two, with links to articles about in many publications. The section on Biden’s “garbage” comment ran for over 900 words. 

In today’s print editions of the New York Times and Washington Post, there were above-the-fold front-page articles about it. At the Post in particular, they’re treating it like it’s 9/11 or the moon landing. Here’s what you get if you search “Biden garbage” on their site; I apologize for the tiny type, but I had to reduce it to get just the first page of results into the frame:

I would like to hear a plausible case for this being important at all, let alone the most important political story in the world right now. Seriously. If you asked one of the reporters so eagerly chasing this story why it matters, what would they say? They might say, “Well, Republicans are making a big deal out of it, so that makes it a story.” And that is indeed a key reason why. It’s remarkable how easily manipulated elite journalists are by the GOP — all they have to do is say “We are outraged, outraged I tell you!” and the reporters dutifully start scribbling. 

And always, always, always, reporters use the passive voice — the controversy has taken over the campaign, become a headache for Harris, etc. — without any acknowledgement that it’s a story because reporters chose to make it a story. They could have made a different and better choice. They are not just observers. They have agency.

But is “Republicans Pretend to Be Outraged” really a story? Is it what Americans need to know right now? Does it illuminate anything, or bring more understanding, or enable people to make a more informed vote? Of course not. 

That isn’t to say that Democrats don’t try to create news stories out of “gaffes,” or that they don’t sometimes succeed. But how does it make even the barest bit of sense that a thing a politician says one time, and immediately clarifies, is treated as more meaningful than the lies and threats and generally appalling things Donald Trump says over and over and over?¹

Democrats are not blameless in the garbage case, because as the controversy swelled, they reacted as though it was in fact legitimate, and their goal was to counter the charge that Democrats think Republican voters are garbage. What they should actually have done is push back against the narrative itself. They should have confronted and shamed the reporters propagating this nonsense. 

The correct answer to a reporter’s question about Biden’s statement isn’t “We don’t believe any American is trash,” the correct answer is, “What the hell is wrong with you, Mr. Journalist? You know this whole thing is bullshit. You know Republicans aren’t really angry. The election is less than a week away, and this is what you’re spending your time on? This is what you think is important for voters to hear about? Do you have that much contempt for your audience, and your own profession? Are you really that easily manipulated? For god’s sake, try to find some dignity, you pathetic hack.”  

But they don’t say that. Nobody tells the elite reporters that they’re terrible at their job, and they think their job is to report the same thing all the other news outlets are reporting. As the election approaches, the reporting gets worse — policy issues are pushed aside, the most ludicrous micro-controversies are given front-page treatment, more and more attention is paid to increasingly useless polls and pointless speculation, and they ride into election day on a wave of triviality. 

Garbage in, garbage out

Clearly excited about how much attention Biden’s comments were getting from the media, Trump, who was campaigning in Wisconsin, took a ride in a garbage truck like a big boy and left on his orange safety vest for an entire speech:

If there’s any silver lining here, it’s that there is not much reason to believe this will win Trump any votes. If you’re genuinely on the fence about your vote, you probably think he looks like a buffoon. And it’s hard to imagine there is a significant population of voters who will say, “That does it! I wasn’t going to vote, but once I heard that Joe Biden, who isn’t on the ballot, said a thing that you might believe means he thinks Trump voters are ‘garbage’? Well now I’m definitely voting, and for Trump!” 

But the most disheartening thing about all this is how it shows our elite media have learned nothing. That doesn’t mean there isn’t excellent reporting out there, and in many of the same outlets that consumed themselves with this story. There is. But people like me have been writing books and articles about their failures for decades, and they keep making the same mistakes. Eight years after “But her emails!”, at the very moment when the public needs them to do their best, they’re still dishing out the same garbage to their audiences.

1. This is why my “gaffe” rule has long been that if a candidate says something bad one time, corrects themselves, and never says it again — like Tim Walz saying once that as a member of the National Guard he carried guns “in war” — then it means nothing and should be treated accordingly. If they say a bad thing, get called on it, but keep repeating it — like JD Vance lying about his constituents eating pets — then it does in fact demonstrate something meaningful about them.