The Mainstream Media Will Not Go Gently
It's a mistake to assume the mainstream media is dumb. Or that they're unaware what they're doing. Raising the question, what are they doing? A look at the Wall Street Journal's reporting for clues
Greetings friends.
I explained recently how people form new beliefs and seek to influence what others believe. See Why Beliefs Persist. We’re in a fierce battle for the (informational) soul of America right now.
This explains the increasingly exaggerated language used by the mainstream media as they seek to regain control of the narrative and quell dissenting voices.
For decades, the Wall Street Journal has been a bastion of level-headed objectivity. It’s tough to see them shrilly denounce not just President Trump but also his supporters.
They’ve devolved from telling us what they think, which is the basic function of an editorial board, to telling us what others think (a potential outcome of investigative reporting) and even what is apparently in our private thoughts.
Tell me what you think, and I’ll listen. No one else is in a better position to know, and if you have an interesting perspective, I want to hear it.
Tell me what someone else thinks, and I have some concerns. How do you know? Isn’t it better for us to listen to what they have to say directly than to have you divine someone’s thoughts?
Tell me what I think, and you lose all credibility. If I haven’t told you, you’re projecting or guessing. Or worse, seeking to influence what I think. If I want a mentalist show, I’ll go to the carnival.
The simple insults we’ve come to expect
Here are some casual insults that are now standard fare in the WSJ editorial pages. The following examples are from just the past several weeks. All bullets are direct quotes from the mentioned editors. (Bold text is my emphasis.)
Walter Russell Mead
Mr. Trump’s utter lack of scruples about democracy and institutional integrity will simplify the task of finding and encouraging Venezuelan partners to implement his agenda.
Administration policy toward China tacks between what many observers think is colossal recklessness … to what others see as stupefying obsequiousness.
Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
Because Mr. Trump is by nature a reacher and overreacher, the next president was never very likely to emulate the norm defilements Mr. Trump is guilty of….. For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law. So said a Peruvian dictator. A trumped-up criminal investigation of Fed chief Jerome Powell is a case in point.
Mr. Trump is drawn to teams that are winning and mobilizing resources on their own, so he can step in and take credit for their success.
Joseph C. Sternberg
Mr. Trump has foolishly forced everyone to circle the wagons to defend the Fed from a moronic lawfare campaign. And I do mean moronic, in classic Trump fashion.
Mr. Trump’s sloppy, scattershot lawfare… has made it harder for sane people to hold the Fed accountable in ways that would matter.
Peggy Noonan
Ms. Noonan is in a class of her own. She’s a virtuoso writer, and she’s put her talents to vilifying President Trump with gusto:
As a piece of work Mr. Trump’s speech was blunt and blubbery, didn’t persuade but only asserted, and not in a winning way. It was propaganda that didn’t bother to make believe it wasn’t propaganda, which always feels like an insult. His mouth moved oddly, as if he were mad at his words.
Anyone can imitate Mr. Trump because the sound is cuttingly clear and unchanging: It’s the rhythm and cadence of the Borscht Belt comics of “The Ed Sullivan Show.”
[C]lassic Trump in that it was boastful… and in another way it was just a line, meant to entertain, a way to vamp until he thought of something better.
Mr. Trump in this term is the first president to be all three [of the Corleone brothers]. He has a Michael side, but it’s overwhelmed by the [fiery] Sonny side, and his [incapable] Fredo side is more than a third of the whole.
That is what is so exhausting about him … and for some horrifying, that he’s all three, and you never know which one is coming to work today.
In his first term Mr. Trump tested boundaries, probing like the proverbial Russian soldier who keeps sticking the bayonet in until he strikes bone. Now he operates as if he sees no boundaries.
In the first term there was a sense he didn’t quite know what was constitutional and needed to be told. Now there is the sense he doesn’t really care, that the old parchment may not be equal to the demands of the moment.
The decision to go in was Trumpian in its boldness, Trumpian in its blur—he has ad-libbed and free associated about his strategic reasoning a lot but never issued a truly formal and persuasive statement, as if he didn’t trust his own reasons or didn’t trust others’ ability to understand them.
His Capitol Hill base for once and famously began to kick away this summer, with loyalists breaking with him… His problem: Once someone makes a successful jailbreak, all the other prisoners know a jailbreak is possible. This changes the conversation in the prison yard.
There is the matter of his mouth. The president’s supporters have for 10 years put up with his babyish obsession with insulting people.
A reader could be forgiven at this point for asking, “I’m sorry, whose babyish obsession with insulting people are we talking about?”
Mind-reading what others think
As mentioned, it’s one thing for an opinion writer to tell us what they think. If they’re a smart person and an original thinker, that’s what we’re here for. True, insults show little originality or thought, but sometimes a writer can’t help themselves.
What are we to make, however, of bald assertions about what others are thinking or feeling? Here’s an amazing recent statement from Ms. Noonan:
A thing that many Trump opponents don’t say but feel: The idea of Trump as president is still so shocking that they can’t believe the American people did it. They don’t really care about “the reasons” or how others were experiencing America, whose ox the past few decades was being gored. They’re mad, and they think less of their countrymen now. They don’t really like them anymore and don’t feel they have to.
That is a shocking paragraph to find in a leading national newspaper. If opponents don’t say this, how does Ms. Noonan know they feel it? Who is still so “shocked” ten years later that Mr. Trump was elected President? Who is dismissing “the reasons” for one of the largest popular votes in history? Who are these mad people who think less of their countrymen, neither liking them nor feeling they have to?
As wild as this is, Ms. Noonan goes on to tell Trump supporters what they secretly think:
A thing many Trump supporters don’t say but feel: They enjoy the suffering they’ve caused…. What Trump supporters felt toward them was social and professional envy. Trumpism gave this flaw a new carapace of meaning, a political rationale that lifted it out of pure and eternal human spite.
Ms. Noonan asserts that, in their secret hearts, Trump supporters were envious of the social and professional standing of elites. These jealous people gave vent to their pure spite by electing Trump. They enjoy the suffering this causes. Oh, is that all?
The Wall Street Journal editors are not stupid
We have seen the editors’ bias revealed in their words. Yet we know these are the careful writings of highly intelligent people. They’re aware they have a national platform. So what are they doing?
Ms. Noonan recently shared a glimpse into her thoughts, which may provide an inadvertent clue:
This reminded me of some stinging words, among the most famous ever written about journalism, by a journalist herself: “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.”
That is Janet Malcolm, from her book “The Journalist and the Murderer.” Malcolm thought journalists must proceed with humility, and an awareness of the central fact of what they’re doing.
I credit Ms. Noonan with being neither stupid nor full of herself, such that she understands what she is doing: Gaining readers’ trust and betraying them without remorse.
If she is like the Trump opponents whose minds she claims to know, she’s mad, she thinks less of her countrymen, she doesn’t like them anymore, and she doesn’t feel she has to. A person feeling that way would gladly twist their words to get their way.
But still, what good does it do Ms. Noonan and the WSJ editorial board? What is it they’re after?
Here’s our final clue. Remember our earlier discussion about how, in the battle for shaping the narrative, the losing elites will lash out in anger? It’s not just citizens who feel elites’ ire.
These comments from a recent piece by Ms. Noonan make it clearer:
We have to notice that the moment we’re in appears to be one of incipient political violence. It is a strange peculiarity of Mr. Trump that he constantly pumps the pedal of this already speeding car.
Everyone who speaks publicly in America needs to take it down a notch, be cooler, more deliberate, more aware of the context.
Somebody is going to get hurt. … The parties, the podcasters and streamers—everyone’s trying to excite a country that’s too excited already. They never think they’re doing “incitement” with the supercharged and accusatory things they say; they just think they’re telling the truth and breaking through.
But I want to speak of Mr. Trump. He is less careful in what he says than any previous president in history, we know this…. His is often menacing and dehumanizing. What he is doing right now with the press is very dangerous.
Ms. Noonan says political violence is incipient. Although pundits need to “take it down a notch,” Ms. Noonan would never say she’s inciting violence; she’s just telling the truth. And the truth is, Mr. Trump is the least careful president in history, menacing and dehumanizing, so really, it’s his own fault.
“Somebody” is going to get hurt.
Gee, I wonder who Ms. Noonan thinks that will be?
Be well.
A thing many of your readers don’t say but feel: your genius.
My problem with today's "media" --whatever that is--began long before Trump was in view. The shift from reporting and analyzing to creating the news from a personal point of view began early in this century. It isn't a new thing.
I can take in your position of talking about specific people, by name--and your essay is meaningful for that perspective. I am less interested in writings and responses that paint with very broad brushes, talking about "they", "them", and "people". For me, the vitriolic atmosphere in our country isn't just media, it's cohorts that grind their axes to an extremely sharp edge and then swing them wildly and widely, believing theirs is the only axe that matters. Thus, echo chambers are built (I know--mixed metaphors), and we then bloviate within, knowing we'll have a ton of support. "Trump sucks." "AI is evil." "I'm right."