Falling Down?

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Article  in The Hollywood Reporter by Ales Wepring, 11/7/24

Headline:  “Media’s Crisis Point: It’s Losing Relevance and Scorned In Trump Era. A Reboot May Be Next”

Subhead: “Former President Trump’s decisive victory Tuesday will cause media outlets — particularly those that fashioned themselves as nonpartisan — to rethink their strategies.”

“Former President Trump’s decisive victory Tuesday led to a shockwave that was felt in newsrooms across Washington D.C. and New York. Everyone knew the polls were close and that a Trump win was a strong possibility, sure, but the scale of Trump’s win left one senior producer at a broadcast network stunned: “We are questioning our relevance right now,” they said Wednesday morning.”

“. . . Indeed, there are blaring red warnings signs for traditional media everywhere you look. Ratings for the broadcast and cable news channels saw steep declines in ratings from Nielsen (finals showed an average of 42.3 million people, down from nearly 57 million four years ago), with the lowest ratings in decades. The steepest drop was felt at CNN, which saw its numbers fall below MSNBC for the first election night since that channel launched nearly three decades ago.”

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/media-crisis-trump-era-1236055073/

Future of Media After Election?

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Article in Poynter by Tom Jones, 11/9/24

Headline:  “Opinion | Donald Trump and the media: a look back and a look ahead to the next four years

Subhead:  “Four media experts and analysts discuss how the press covered Trump in this election cycle and what to expect going forward”

“. . . [Trump had had] a relentless barrage of attacks on his enemies, which includes the press.

It’s that style, as well as a constantly evolving media landscape, that has left the journalism world continually reviewing how it has covered Trump and how it should cover him in the future. And it asks these questions while wondering if Trump will follow through on many of the threats he has made against the press.

“. . . I’m no longer sure what “the press” is, and what speakers mean when they refer to it. Is it The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox, USA Today? Yes. Is it The Atlantic, NPR, PBS, BBC and The Associated Press? Yes again. Is it a thousand local newspapers? OK. Talk radio? Well … Podcasts? Umm … TikTok, X and social media?

https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2024/what-to-expect-next-trump-presidency-media/

Legacy Media Dead?

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Article in The Atlantic by Charlie Warzel, 11/8/24

Headline:  “Bad News”

Subhead:   “Legacy media must compete against a choose-your-own-adventure reality.”

By Charlie Warzel

” ‘You are the media now.’ That’s the message that began to cohere among right-wing influencers shortly after Donald Trump won the election this week. Elon Musk first posted the phrase, and others followed. ‘The legacy media is dead. Hollywood is done. Truth telling is in. No more complaining about the media,’ the right-wing activist James O’Keefe posted shortly after. ‘You are the media.’

“It’s a particularly effective message for Musk, who spent $44 billion to purchase a communications platform that he has harnessed to undermine existing media institutions and directly support Trump’s campaign.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/11/you-are-the-media-now/680602/

Fear in the Media Moves Voters

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Article in FAIR by Julie Hollar and Jim Naureckas, 11/7/24

Headline:  “Media Blame Left for Trump Victory—Rather Than Their Own Fear-Based Business Model”

“Corporate media may not have all the same goals as MAGA Republicans, but they share the same strategy: Fear works.

“Appeals to fear have an advantage over other kinds of messages in that they stimulate the deeper parts of our brains, those associated with fight-or-flight responses. Fear-based messages tend to circumvent our higher reasoning faculties and demand our attention, because evolution has taught our species to react strongly and quickly to things that are dangerous.

“. . . With refugees treated as a scourge in centrist and right-wing media alike, is it any wonder that Trump can harvest votes by promising to do something about this menace?  . . . ”

“. . .Kamala Harris did not run as a progressive, either in terms of economic policy or identity politics. But to a corporate media that largely complemented, rather than countered, Trump’s fear-based narratives on immigrants, trans people and crime, blaming the left is infinitely more appealing than recognizing their own culpability.”

https://fair.org/home/media-blame-left-for-trump-victory-rather-than-their-own-fear-based-business-model/

and in Common Dreams:

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/mainstream-media-trump-win

 

Farewell Unrestricted Media?

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Article on CNN by Hadas Gold, 11/8/24

Headline:  ”  ‘Death by a thousand cuts’: How experts warn Trump could use an authoritarian playbook to go after the media”

“President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to go after much of the media in his second term, threatening to jail journalists, revoke broadcast licenses and target outlets with a flurry of lawsuits. It’s a playbook he’s threatened to use before.

“During his first term in the White House, Trump regularly tangled with journalists, assailed the press as the “enemy of the people,” and banned reporters from official briefings. In recent months on the campaign trail, Trump employed dark and violent rhetoric to attack the media — telling a crowd this week that he wouldn’t mind if journalists got shot — and sparking fears he will attempt to weaponize the government against the free press.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/08/media/trump-authoritarian-press-media-attacks/index.html

Media Literacy is Important

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Graphic from FAIR

Article in FAIR

Headline:  “Media Literacy Guide: How to Detect Bias in News Media”

“Media have tremendous power in shaping political and cultural narratives—telling us what and who matters, why things are as they are and what it would mean to change them. An informed and critical audience challenges news media to be fair, independent and accurate.

” . . .  some questions to ask yourself about news you consume, whether it’s in print, online, on TV or radio or in your social media feed.”

https://fair.org/take-action-now/media-activism-kit/how-to-detect-bias-in-news-media/

Australia’s Social Media Action

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Article in the New York Times by By Eve Sampson, 11/7/24

Headline:  “Australia Moves to Ban Young Teens From Social Media”

Subhead:  “The proposed legislation would put the country at the forefront of regulating social media access for children.”

“Far-reaching legislation announced on Thursday would make the platforms that are the lifeblood of many teenagers — among them TikTok — off limits to anyone under 16.

“Social media is doing harm to our kids and I’m calling time on it,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared at a news conference. “I’ve spoken to thousands of parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles. They, like me, are worried sick about the safety of our kids online.”

The proposed legislation, which puts Australia at the forefront of regulating social media access for children, would hold platforms accountable for enforcing the new rules, Mr. Albanese said. There will be no exemptions for children with parental permission, he said, but neither underage users nor their parents will face punishment for violations.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/07/world/australia/australia-teens-social-media.html

From AP:

” The Australian government announced on Thursday what it described as world-leading legislation that would institute an age limit of 16 years for children to start using social media, and hold platforms responsible for ensuring compliance.”

https://apnews.com/article/australia-social-media-age-limit-e8259408c0b1456f41967decd474782a

From UPI:

“Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Thursday his government will introduce legislation to ban children under 16 years of age from social media.”

Universal Right Media

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Article in Daily Kos by Martone, 11/7/24

Headline: “It’s the right wing disinformatio media stupid”

Subhead:  “It seems like everyone is missing the bigger picture here”

“No progressive candidate was going to win this year nor is likely to win in the U.S. anytime soon. Over the past 30 years, the right-wing has achieved near-total control of the media landscape in the U.S.

“In conservative areas, Fox News is omnipresent—not only in homes but also in bars, laundromats, and even doctors’ waiting rooms. This saturation gives Fox News the appearance of being a legitimate news source. And Fox isn’t alone; other “news” channels with even more extreme right-wing slants compete for attention.”

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/11/7/2284024/-It-s-the-right-wing-disinformation-media-stupid?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

Media Didn’t Understand Latinos

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Article in Poynter by Fernanda Camarena, 11/7/24

Headline:  “The mainstream media misunderstood Latino voters once again”

“The election results underscore how disconnected and oversimplified media coverage of this community turned out to be”

“While Trump lost the overall percentage of Latino votes to Vice President Kamala Harris, he jumped 13 percentage points from 2020 to a record high for a Republican presidential nominee, according to national exit poll data. As the media dutifully documented Trump’s insults, threats and rhetoric along the campaign trail, it framed his immigration and mass-deportation plans as game-changers (or “game over”) for Latino voters. But Latino voters ultimately demonstrated across the country, including within many key swing-state districts, that they believed a Trump presidency is a better bet for them than a Harris term.

“It’s clear that news organizations inaccurately reflected Latino priorities while leaning on assumptions about how they expected Latinos should react or feel about Trump’s aggressive immigration plans. The ‘garbage’ joke was essentially framed as the last straw.”

https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2024/latino-voters-trump-racism-tony-hinchcliffe-media/

Wrong Media Message?

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Article from The Hill by Steve Krakauer, 11/7/24

Headline:  “Trump won because Americans rejected false media narratives”

“It’s fair to assess that most Americans fully rejected the framing employed by large portions of the mainstream media about the stakes in the election. They didn’t buy that Trump is “the tyrant George Washington feared,” as The Atlantic screamed. They don’t believe that Trump represents “American fascism,” as the New Republic tried to argue.

The core thesis from the Trump-addicted Acela media was that Trump was a threat to “democracy,” and that Harris was positioned as the “unity” candidate. These were the narrative throughlines presented.

And yet there is good reason to see them as antithetical to how the average American views these issues. This fundamental disconnect is why the press failed to convince the country to rebuff Trump on Tuesday.

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4978909-trump-won-because-americans-rejected-false-media-narratives/