WMSNBC morning hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski react when they announced to their viewers that they had visited Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, Florida, resort last week. He must have suspected that it was.
The liberal news network’s married co-hosts continued to criticize President Trump for years, especially in the run-up to the presidential election. This time, following his victory, they told viewers they were trying to reset communication with the man who just a few weeks ago warned he would bring fascism to America.
“Joe and I realized it was time to do something different,” Brzezinski told “Morning Joe” viewers on Monday. “It starts with not just talking about Donald Trump, but talking with him.”
What are their rewards? Online barn burning by online critics and declining viewership for programs and networks already struggling in the rapidly declining U.S. cable news industry. The next morning, the network’s broadcast viewership plummeted 38%, according to Nielsen Media Research.
A truly free press cannot remain neutral when it comes to lies and violations of civil norms.
jim sleeper
But Mr. Scarborough and Mr. Brzezinski’s flip is just one data point in the U.S. media landscape, and how some core parts of American reporting will cover the second Trump administration. It also suggests that they may be recalibrating their approach to where they stand in opposition. During his first term many of the news organizations were defined as regressing.
But these moves came after a campaign in which President Trump frequently attacked the media, calling them “the enemy of the people.” This comes as his allies threaten to suppress reporting and attack media critics. They also called out a number of media companies for what they say are often unsubstantiated and biased reports, such as President Trump’s claim that CBS misleadingly edited his interview with Kamala Harris. They have already filed multi-billion dollar lawsuits.
Indeed, these threats appear to be affecting MSNBC, which also now faces an uncertain future as its network is separated from its parent company, Comcast. Any subsequent sales would fall under the authority of regulators appointed by President Trump.
Pac News said the couple visited Trump’s tropical paradise because Scarborough was “terrified” that the president-elect’s Justice Department would pursue him. “That’s what this case is about,” a source told a news site about the motive. “It has nothing to do with ratings or Comcast. It has everything to do with fear of retribution and investigation.”
“It was about access and power,” says media writer Jeff Jarvis. “But this visit did nothing in terms of access, and they didn’t bring anything journalistic back home. They didn’t take away anything journalistic from the show because of their own personal fears. , were willing to sacrifice their reputations and the reputations of their networks.”
But MSNBC is not alone in facing tough choices. American media faces a number of problems. The fear of President Trump’s actions, the complex business decisions and benefits faced by business owners, and even the president-elect’s popular vote victory shows that his audience exists beyond safe havens. This is my understanding. Criticism of Trump.
However, this is a sea with strong waves. The Washington Post, famous for bringing down Richard Nixon, is under billionaire owner Jeff Bezos and British journalist Will Lewis, who was entrusted with running the once storied brand. has been the focus of controversy.
The Washington Post lost 250,000 subscribers after refusing to endorse the president. Bezos defended the decision, raising suspicions that Amazon’s role as a data cloud contractor for the defense industry was involved. But Lewis has not changed his mind after Trump’s victory, and was reportedly fired last week as the paper’s longtime and widely respected political editor.
The Post’s controversy comes at the same time that the Los Angeles Times made a similar call to block its endorsement of Kamala Harris, which also caused widespread dismay in the newsroom and reflected how much the paper It raised questions about whether he would continue to be critical of Trump.
Patrick Soon-Cion, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, characterized the issue as an attempt at neutrality, but his activist daughter Nika Soon-Cion also said the decision was a continuation of Harris’ opposition to Israel, which is at war in Gaza. He said that the support provided had an impact. This was later confirmed via internal email.
CNN is also trying to change course after years of anti-Trump reporting under Jeff Zucker. Last week, major cable news reporter Dana Bash said it was unclear whether a group of men marching in Columbus, Ohio, carrying swastika flags belonged to the far right or the far left.
“A group of neo-Nazis paraded through the city wearing swastikas, waving their hands and covering their faces,” Basch said. “I don’t know which side of the aisle this is coming from. I mean, neo-Nazis are usually from the far right.” The statement quickly became a target of ridicule as a seemingly bizarre attempt at neutrality.
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Even at the New York Times, some have suggested an improved tone from the first Trump administration, even as the paper continues to report on Trump’s preparations for a return to power. Immediately after the election, columnist David Brooks argued that Trump was “a sower of chaos, not fascism,” and that “within chaos there is an opportunity for a new society, and that Trump’s political, economic, and psychological “There are opportunities for new responses to targeted attacks,” he added.
It’s certainly a complex challenge. While the media’s symbiotic relationship with Trump was both nurturing and self-defeating at the beginning of its readership surge, a sizable portion of the population, the part that returned Trump to the White House, became even more hostile to mainstream media. became popular and accepted. The idea is that it’s “fake news.”
The U.S. news industry, with a few exceptions, is on life support as audiences shrink and social media traffic dries up. Public trust in social media has increased, and news organizations now face a second Trump administration with fewer resources.
But will a more restrained approach work? Will it attract an audience that has traditionally been hostile to the media, and will it blunt attacks from the Trump administration?
Some are skeptical.
Jarvis, the media writer, said the media is playing it safe with President Trump: “They’re going after readers they can’t get, and in the process they’re pissing off the readers they’ve got.” “That’s the paradox – the media still believes in the media. The challenge now for journalism is to make people feel heard and to get away from the power structures of politics and money. It’s about being separated.”
The only network with any semblance of strength seems to be right-wing Fox News, which dominated 24-hour newscasts throughout the campaign and seems confident in its identity as America recovers under President Trump.
Fox News finished the week of Nov. 11-17 with the highest share of cable news viewers in the network’s 28-year history across multiple categories, while MSNBC had the lowest share of cable news viewers in a quarter century. It was a week with record viewer ratings.
For some observers, all of this points to worrying times ahead, as the United States faces a president with openly authoritarian sympathies and radical right-wing policies.
“If the media does not resolve to confront and challenge President Trump from top to bottom, it will find itself embroiled in an existential battle for its own integrity. A truly free press. “No one can survive being neutral to lies and the destruction of civic norms,” said author and former Yale University political science lecturer Jim Sleeper.
“If the people decide to trade their freedoms and rights for the stability and security that authoritarians always promise, then the press must make a choice and decide that honest journalists are dissidents. .”
