Although media scholars and organizations like the White House Correspondents Association love to blow smoke up their own ass about the "fourth estate", journalistic standards and firewalls between the business side and publishing side of American newsrooms, it's become quite clear to any rational person that with few exceptions, media outlets in the United States have returned to an age of "yellow journalism", where the majority of our media publications are owned by a handful of wealthy oligarchs and billionaire sponsors who put the promotion of personal agendas over any sense of news gathering. Liberals are often reluctant to address this fact because it invites triumphant tantrums of imbecility from right-wing shitposters who would gleefully insist, "See!!! I told you you can't trust no media!" and then proceed to insist that the only people who you can actually trust are people like Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson. i.e. the most racist, backward and fanatical bunch of conspiracy mongering lunatics in the world of punditry.
Part of the reason for people's distrust of media outlets has to do with the extremely poor job that mainstream for-profit media outlets in the US have done over the past few years. A perfect example are the polls that show up every election cycle asking people "Do you trust the media". "The Media" is an extremely broad array of communications outlets that includes everything from right-wing podcasters to high quality foreign broadcasters like the BBC and Deutsche-Welle. A person cannot answer the question "do you trust the media" without engaging in extremely selective thinking, and ignoring large parts of the American media landscape that are pure garbage. Meanwhile, when those polls come in with low numbers, the far right reacts with glee, and once again goes insisting that their preferred propaganda-sphere (the exact same collection of media outlets that leads so many Americans to answer"no" to the question of do you trust the media) are the only media outlets that anyone should bother to listen to. I should clarify that when I say "the media" in this particular context, I am referring to a handful of large media outlets that have repeatedly posted articles questioning Joe Biden's competency, while giving Trump a free pass on his increasingly strange and irate behaviors.
What's especially suspicious is how since the first Presidential debate on Thursday, June 27th, several legacy media brands have apparently decided to follow the example of right-wing propaganda outlets by constantly attacking Biden. Almost every single article that has appeared since then has basically amounted to shit-posting and concern trolling over Biden's age. The ABC News interview with Biden and George Stephanopoulos is a prime example. There were almost zero questions about Biden's past policies. Pretty much the entire interview was just Stephanopoulos badgering Biden about his age and asking him to drop out. This is in spite of the fact that Trump is only three years younger than Biden, that Trump appears to be around seventy pounds overweight, has obvious problems with physical coordination, has posted a series of inane all-caps social media "truths" that indicate a tenuous grasp with reality, has given a series of inane and rambling campaign speeches that suggest a rapidly accelerating case of dementia, has to have major political issues described to him by aides in children's book like Powerpoint presentations with lots of pictures and as few words as possible, and wears adult diapers and appears to have defecated himself both during courtroom proeedings, and at least one time on national television. Also, there's absolutely no reason to think that Biden dropping out would lead to a cessation of concern trolling from media outlets. It's far more likely it will just mean a return of "Democrats in disarray" articles and obsessive hand-wringing over a party that dropped its primary winner in the middle of campaign season, and doom-posting about "the end of the Democratic Party."
This betrayal of Biden by certain legacy media outlets is especially frustrating to liberals, as it was Biden voters, not Trump supporters, who stood up to defend the media against Trump's claims that "the media are the enemy of the people." That those same media outlets which Trump attacked, and which liberals defended now appear to be getting in line to promote an authoritarian who considers dictators to be his greatest idols, feels like a gross betrayal of the American public, our Constitution, and the notion that the media should act as a check on those who want to take away our freedoms. There is no question that in the course of the weeks around the end of June and beginning of July 2024 the mainstream media has acted more like a Republican Political Action committee than independent journalists.
At this point we do not know what the reason is for the media dogpile on Biden. It's possible that if Trump is re-elected, and Republicans are successful in turning the US into a pseudo-Democracy modeled on Putin's Russia where news of Trump is strictly censored and political dissidents are poisoned or put into gulags that we may never know. Nonetheless, I present here three theories of what may have lead to this turn of events. Part of studying information warfare is analyzing messaging to try to figure out what the motivation for that messaging was. This is a process similar to the practice of criminal profiling. Below are what I consider to be the three most likely reasons for the recent media dog-pile on President Biden, and the comparative silence regarding Trump's own shortcomings.
1. Profit. There is an infamous quote from former CBS executive Leslie Moonves where he claimed that "Donald Trump may be terrible for democracy but he's damn good for CBS!" and this in a nutshell encapsulates why media outlets want Trump re-elected. Cable tv news and some newspapers have seen substantial subscription and television ratings declines over the last three years. It's quite possible that media executives have simply decided that the financial benefits from another four years of chaos from "the reality tv presidency" outweigh any personal threats to them from a loss of democracy. This observation is likely based on observations of Putin's Russia, where a number of legacy media outlets from the Soviet era continue to thrive. All American executives have to do to ensure their own place of safety in such an administration is make sure they are attached to a suitably large "legacy media" brand, and make sure to push out any troublemakers who keep trying to report things the administration does not want discussed.
2. Fear. During Hitler's rise to power in 1930s Germany the Sturmabteilung were a group of Nazi thugs who would go to political rallies of opposing parties or into the offices of media outlets who reported unfavorably on the rising Nazi Party and beat people up and occasionally commit murders. They were also responsible for the vandalism and arson of Jewish owned businesses all across Germany. The "Trump Sturmbeilung" is the phrase we'll use to refer to the army of Trump supporters who loyally step in to make terrorist threats, stalk Trump's enemies and even commit terrorist attacks or assault journalists whenever he bids them via a campaign speech or social media message. It's quite likely that many media outlets fear the potential of attacks if Trump is re-elected, and prefer the safety that being a Trump lackey provides.
3. Kompromat. The idea that Trump may have comprising evidence (here we're using the Russian word "kompromat") on various newspaper and cable television executives came about as a result of the media's response to news that a judge had released documents from Jeffrey Epstein's legal settlement in Florida, and that those documents confirmed that Trump was known as "John Doe 174", which tells us that Jeffrey Epstein had a broad reach among wealthy and influential people in New York City and Florida and had at least 173 other clients. Given the close ties between Trump and Epstein, and prior coverage of Epstein's activities, this should be a story that's getting front page coverage all across the country, but coverage has been surprisingly sparse, with many media outlets not discussing it at all, and those few outlets that are covering the story frequently offer a brief bit of commentary, but fail to provide the link to the actual documents (included in the link on Epstein's name above). In a recent FOX Interview Trump said that he may not release the documents from other Epstein investigations because, as he claimed, "there's a lot of fake stuff in there". It's entirely possible that there are welathy and influential newspaper and cable television executives who were caught up in Epstein's web and who fear their names might be exposed in future investigations. These individuals may be trying to promote Trump's candidacy in hopes that he'll shut down any future investigations and keep the documents concealed, rather than allowing those documents to be described in future DOJ press releases and made available in the normal course of the law as a Biden administration would.
We do not know for certain why mainstream media outlets have started attacking Biden. Being an information warfare analyst by avocation, I naturally resort to three of the oldest motives in the history of humanity: money, fear and blackmail. I hope that seeing this enumeration of causes will at least provide a sense of recognition, and a slight bit of relief for those who are frustrated over the current state of news coverage. If we're really lucky, perhaps some newspaper and cable news executives will see this article, and upon realizing that their non-stop concern trolling and shitposting is arousing suspicion, will decide to start offering truly balanced analysis of the two candidates, instead of acting like a bunch of starry-eyed sycophants simping for Trump.
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