Trump Didn’t Break The Media. The Media Broke Themselves

Considering how reluctant the news media are to credit President Trump for anything, it’s fascinating that they give him full ownership of their own decline, when it’s actually the one important thing that he has nothing to do with.

The New York Times “Daily” podcast this week ran an episode bestowing Trump with the honor of “breaking the media.” Examples of such include the president going on popular podcasts, the rise of alternative news platforms, and Trump excluding the Associated Press from the White House press pool. But the most striking part of the episode’s conversation between Times correspondents Michael Barbaro and Jim Rutenberg was when Rutenberg, who covers media, tried distinguishing between more traditional news figures like the late Walter Cronkite of CBS and podcaster Joe Rogan.

“[T]heir networks, the Walter Cronkite, they’re rooted in news,” said Rutenberg, as if “news” is a concrete concept like addition or subtraction. (“News” is whatever any given person didn’t know and that he finds compelling.) “You could like them or hate them but they try to traffic in verifiable fact, following the rules of journalism. Rogan doesn’t. He’s free to say and go wherever he wants and his guests can go on and on about things, no matter how far they may be veering from the verifiable facts.”

That Trump and, more importantly mass audiences, prefer mediums like Rogan’s, where “guests can go on and on about things, no matter how far they may be veering from verifiable facts,” is not something the president invented. It’s the consequence of a thoroughly rotten media, including the Times, assuming it had control over our government and our elections.

In fairness, they kind of did. But now everyone’s in on the scam and they’re aware that they have choices outside of the Times and CBS.

It’s laughable that any of this is related to “veering from verifiable facts.” To wit, this is everything about media like the Times asserting themselves as the sole authority on what’s true. They’re not the sole authority, and proclaiming themselves as such is what made them untrustworthy, unreliable, and most problematic of all, boring.

When Rutenberg says guests on podcasts go “on and on about things, no matter how far they may be veering from verifiable facts,” what he means is: They’re allowed to talk. He might not understand it, but it’s actually really nice when a celebrity or elected official is permitted to speak for even just three minutes without some nag reporter chiming in with a, “No, Mr. President! Your opinion is wrong!”

That’s especially true when the subject says interesting things, and there is no one on the planet who says more interesting things than Donald Trump. He’s had a long life and as all the podcast interviews he participated in last year show, he’s thoughtful and has wildly insightful things to say. But they don’t want to hear those things. They want Democrats to win and keep things in Washington the way they are, no matter what.

It’s boring.

That the Times and the rest of them didn’t think or weren’t interested in showing curiosity about Trump or the people on his team isn’t a credit to the president. It’s a glaring negligence on the dying media’s behalf.

They didn’t want to ask him why he said the things he said or why his supporters wanted him as president. There are infinite interesting stories right there, but they, the dying media, didn’t want it. Instead, they wanted to stifle him and belittle the people who were genuinely curious.

So audiences went elsewhere. They didn’t need The New York Times or its dying peers to get the information that interested them. They found it in podcasts and on social media (so long as it wasn’t suppressed).

Of all the amazing things Trump deserves credit for, destroying the media isn’t one. They did that to themselves.