Donald Trump tells the world he intends to be an authoritarian. So why won’t journalists repeat it?

Just like Hitler before him, Trump is benefiting from the fact that journalism is an incremental, daily business. Every day, reporters have to find something new to write or broadcast. Trump keeps saying dangerous and crazy things, but that’s not new. He’s said it all before. His impeachments and the January 6 insurrection happened years ago. True, he has been indicted four times and now faces up to four criminal trials, but that’s already been reported. What’s new today?

For political reporters covering the campaign, that means usually treating Trump’s authoritarian promises as “B-matter.” That’s an old newspaper phrase that refers to the background information that reporters gather about a story’s subject. B-matter is usually exiled to the bottom of an article — if not cut entirely to save space or time.

But the horrifying truth is that when Trump’s dictatorial ambitions are left on the cutting room floor as B-matter, America is in trouble.

    •  sp3tr4l   ( @sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip ) 
      19•1 month ago

      Most likely its a mix of cognitive dissonance (it can’t happen here) and not really caring as theyre mostly well off liberals (oh well, if it does, im wealthy so my life won’t seriously change that much!).

        •  sp3tr4l   ( @sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip ) 
          8•1 month ago

          Wild thing is I am white, cis and basically hetero…

          …and I don’t see how anyone can not take this all seriously.

          Lots of non white, non hetero talking heads on major channels that don’t seem to care either.

          A lot of it is just the lucky few that made the right connection, or were born into wealth, who never had any life destroying tragedy ruin their career, who had reserve finances or other contacts or safety nets to rely on…

          Ive met loads if people like that. They’ll give you all the emotional support in the world, until either disagree with them about nearly anything somewhat serious, or if you ask for help that might actually cost them some time or money.

          There’s programs for that! I donate to a charity that… yeah, its all underfunded, extremely difficult to apply to and pass.

          Then they get angry because in their head theyre a good person, but this grates upon their fundamental belief in a meritocratic society, causes cognitive dissonance.

          Survivorship bias is deadly.

    •  t3rmit3   ( @t3rmit3@beehaw.org ) OP
      4•1 month ago

      The article isn’t about “Trump’s manipulation of the media”, it’s about the sensationalism that revenue-driven news falls into, both by necessity and by convenience, and how that model is unequipped to handle rhetoric that is ‘slow-burning’.

      Trump is not playing 4D chess, he’s just being his usual horrible self each day, but the media is unable to simply run “Trump still horrible” each day, so they end up treating his current horrible-ness as a new baseline after the shock wears off, which just normalizes his behavior.

      It’s like the inverse of the boy crying wolf, where the wolves really are attacking each day, but since everyone “knows” that, the town crier kid stops telling people the wolves are attacking unless they attack in some novel way, and over time the wolves attacking isn’t even ‘bad’, it’s just how the villagers live.

    •  ulkesh   ( @ulkesh@beehaw.org ) English
      5•1 month ago

      He got 3 lying Supreme Court justices to the bench the first time around. And now some of my kid’s rights have been removed.

      Yes, vote, but don’t do so thinking that he’s somehow not a threat — he most definitely is.