Forced to choose between strict neutrality or defending democracy over the past four years, many news outlets opted for the latter, casting Donald Trump as a threat to the nation. This approach dismantled whatever was left of the facade that the media is a disinterested observer of U.S. politics — and created a new crisis for the industry.
I think America’s news media did the right thing and helped to save the country. But while journalists behaved in a way that I would argue was simply small-D democratic, it often looked big-D Democratic, in that it was anti-Trump and therefore anti-Republican Party.
Moving forward, the nearly half of voters who backed a man that the press cast as racist and authoritarian aren’t going to forget the media’s judgment on their candidate. The media can’t credibly go back to posturing as disinterested or neutral — nor should it if Trump and Trumpism remain threats to democracy. It needs to chart a new path forward for a United States with a Trumpian Republican Party. Here are three thoughts on how to do that:
CNN, the New York Times, The Post and similar outlets should embrace and announce their core values. Those three were perhaps the most important and influential mainstream news outlets (so excluding Fox News) in the country even before Trump became president, because of their large reporting staffs and reputations for accuracy. When Trump was in office, all three put defending democratic values above placating Trump-aligned voters. They can’t go back to 2014 — the rise of Trump permanently changed U.S. politics and the media’s role in it. So it would be useful for these outlets to articulate clearly the underlying values that resulted in their covering Trump so negatively.

“Democracy dies in darkness,” a slogan The Post has adopted, is not particularly clarifying. My suggestion is something along these lines:




https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/12/media-must-reinvent-itself-era-trumpian-politics-heres-how/