How the media helps the GOP war on democracy

Sam Smith – In the standard media you’ll find an obsession with power and personality, but far less interest in how these factors affect democracy. For example, it’s noteworthy that the two worst presidents of the last century – Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump – got there in no small part not because of  actual achievements but because of their roles in show business. Meanwhile, real achievers such as FDR and Lyndon Johnson are shoved into the quiet box of history. And Joe Biden gets more coverage about his age than of, say, his economic ideas, described by Robert Reich as “turning out to be the most successful set of economic policies the United States has witnessed in a half-century.”

Part of the problem is that the media have long treated Washington as Hollywood East, making the tales of the powerful more newsworthy than, say, the actual results these folks produce. One way I deal with this temptation is to ask repeatedly  the question: how many are actually affected by this story? It makes it easy to find tales that affect millions albeit not necessarily Biden or Trump.

Ignoring this factor has helped to create a Republican Party that, as described by Heather Cox Richardson, “appears to have fully embraced the antidemocratic ideology advanced by authoritarian leaders like Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán. . . .They claim that the tenets of democracy—equality before the law, free speech, academic freedom, a market-based economy, immigration, and so on—weaken a nation by destroying a ‘traditional’ society based in patriarchy and Christianity.”

While it is easy and righteous to blame Trump for much of what has happened, let’s not forget the media’s infatuation with him that has led it to ignore the effect his values and actions