Can we get back to politics?
Please? (-James Madison, in Hamilton, of course)
Kamala Harris is the VP pick! I had a slight preference for Stacey Abrams, having met her in person, and with a hope she could drive turnout in GA and possibly even a victory. But Harris was my first-choice presidential nominee, and I’m thrilled.
And thankfully, the news outlets are going to start posting a bunch about the election and less about COVID! I mean look at this virus-free homepage:
Finally! U.S. audiences wish to scarf down election spin more than COVID spin! I am less terrified to look at U.S. news sources or to walk in the break room at work (masked, of course), and therefore elated. Dumb election headlines do not trigger me the way dumb COVID headlines do. I have had time to acclimate — my outlier status within U.S. politics preceded both social media and my eligibility to vote. Who knows if the election obsession will outweigh COVID chaos for long — I’m still hoping the editors will be so mentally exhausted from political spin that they lack headspace to dig for overly-alarmist COVID headlines or idol-worship Fauci until November. (Depressing update five minutes after hitting “publish”: CNN’s new main headline is about Sanjay Gupta deciding not to send his kids to school. I guess they’ll be getting mileage out of the new mommy wars for a while yet.)
Irresponsible election headlines are still dangerous, though, and we are about to see whether liberal-slanted news outlets learned that lesson from 2016. A glance at that CNN landing page suggest it hasn’t.
Trump gains ground when Trump is in the headlines, good or bad; he knows this and manipulates the media cycles to keep himself there. One of his key tactics is to start up the liberal outrage machine, and for some reason, liberals continue to hand him the ignition key despite the obviousness of Trump’s maneuvering. Why is the word “Trump” in the largest font here? Why is Harris’s inclusion on a presidential ticket framed in terms of him? There’s a picture of Kamala Harris, but you have to read four headlines before you get to a story focused on her — and even that is not about her qualifications. What does CNN hope to accomplish with phrases like “scattered, kitchen-sink-style list of criticisms” in its headline directly under Senator Harris’s picture?
CNN’s Trump-centered coverage reeks of desperation, overcorrecting from its 2016 Trump-centered coverage by shedding any semblance of objectivity, and with it credibility among independent-thinking readers. They may be countering the false equivalence problem in 2016, in which news outlets let Trump get away with manufacturing ridiculous debates over principles that should not be controversial in a free democratic society, beginning the process of normalizing his aggressive nationalism.
But the problem was the existence of that coverage, not the substance of it. Looking at CNN headlines, how likely is it their readers will leave with any knowledge about Harris herself? I’m sure their sole intention is to discredit Trump, but that’s not in their power to accomplish, and mudslinging the opposition just does not work for Democrats the way it does for Republicans — remember “they go low, we go high” from the above-reproach Michelle Obama? That is the shit liberals (including me) eat up! (Aside: Michelle Obama is amazing, but the public’s adoration and continuous attempts to conjure up a presidential or vice-presidential candidacy she has never expressed interest in, bypassing a long list of qualified Black female politicians who have, demonstrates once again how ambition and assertiveness are held against women even in liberal spheres.) Additionally, and I’m sure unconsciously, this page projects the subtext that Kamala Harris is insufficiently interesting and/or insufficiently qualified to warrant her own coverage. This is a classic microaggression.
So who can the public look to for information about an extremely accomplished, deserving, history-making candidate without having to swallow it alongside an 11 billionth dose of ridiculous Trump behavior?
While I have opinions about the use of “safe” in the top headline, NYT seems to get it — Trump is mentioned the correct number of times on this page (zero, even beyond this screen clip). But … who is going to read much of this behind a paywall? It’s much easier to access Fox News’ misrepresentation of the NYT than it is to access the NYT itself.
The 2nd headline on the left column reads “New York Times called out for ‘drooling’ Kamala Harris front page: ‘The newsletter of the left’” Implying a widespread perception or at least a reputable source, it conveniently omits the name of “caller,” alt-right kingpin Ben Shapiro in a tweet screen-shotting the page with the description “four headlines, all drooling.” Neither the Fox article nor Shapiro explained the “four drooling headlines” charge after leveling it. The headlines themselves are hard to quibble with (particularly when compared with Fox news’s headline describing them).
What they’re really pissed off about is that Harris is getting all the attention, and Trump isn’t. Is the selection biased? Sure. But if the coverage itself is accurate and the headlines sidestep inflammatory language, it won’t damage credibility among anyone other than those who loathe the publication already. The NYT was guilty of false equivalence in 2016 too — and probably caused more damage with that than CNN because of its reputation for articles geared toward highly-educated audiences. (I railed on this hard after NYT released some post-election “Nazis shop at Target too!” piece.)
Now, in its Harris coverage, the NYT has harnessed a countertactic with some promise, and has sent conservatives into a tailspin that they’ll have a harder time bending into a Trump “witch hunt” and thus energizing his base. Again, though, the people who really need to read the articles casting Trump as barely relevant … can’t or won’t pay for them.
Journalists, influencers, individuals in daily conversation and social media, take note. Let’s send Trump back to his cave where he belongs. And we cannot wait until November to model that narrative.
