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Mainstream media can’t stay passive against authoritarians [1]

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Date: 2023-03-17

During the 2016 election, Donald Trump was repeatedly gifted primetime news and front page print coverage. Journalists and reporters prioritized horse-race analysis and reality show-type sensationalism over debunking his lies, denouncing his vitriol, or even simply acknowledging the threat his authoritarian policies would have on our democracy.

RELATED STORY: Texts show how Fox News blocked journalists from disproving the hoaxes that led to Jan. 6 violence

The coverage catapulted him from a fringe right-wing extremist to a fringe right-wing extremist with access to our nuclear codes and state secrets. It took years of advocacy and activism to remove Trump from office. But now, as his legal troubles grow and the Republican Party seeks a sure thing, we're watching too many journalists make the same damaging decisions in their coverage of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

DeSantis wants to be president, using his governorship to inherit, capitalize on, and politicize Donald Trump's hate. He has spearheaded efforts to ban voter drop boxes and set up new roadblocks for vote by mail, gave motorists legal protection if they mow down protesters, pushed authoritarian legislation to silence dissent on and offline, targeted state employees who disagree with him, banned reporters from events unless he could count on positive coverage, and more.

RELATED STORY: The Ron DeSantis wind-up doll is about to walk into a right-wing wall

Mainstream media has largely avoided explicitly naming the danger DeSantis poses to our democracy, instead focusing again on "both sides" coverage and human interest profiles. Journalists covering DeSantis need to clarify that he is an ideologue with a strong and growing track record of authoritarianism who, just like Trump, uses his position of power to punish his enemies, reward his allies, and further his political goals without any regard for the democratic process.

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Will Bunch of The Philadelphia Inquirer explained that mainstream media can no longer downplay or shrug off the extremist actions of the right while looking for nonexistent parallels in the Democratic party to turn into bad faith comparisons, using the attack on Paul Pelosi as an example.

The problems with shrugging off the political implications of growing, violent extremism are two-fold. A muddled voice from America’s leading newsrooms won’t help in quashing the inevitable right-wing conspiracy theories about what happened in San Francisco which — you will not be shocked to learn — spread within hours of the news. But the muted response also gave wide license for TV pundits to “both sides” this assassination attempt when almost all of the political violence in America, as well as the threats to our election, are coming from one side, which is the far-right movement driving the Republican Party. [...] The media’s general botching of the Pelosi story comes as arguably this fall’s most timely book — the veteran journalist Margaret Sullivan’s Newsroom Confidential, which is part memoir and part a message to mainstream media colleagues who respect and might actually listen to her — warns that reporters need to adopt a new and less passive tone in confronting today’s profound threats to democracy. Now that she’s out promoting her tome, Sullivan sees a media that this election season largely is not meeting the moment."

Trump and MAGA Republicans have taken authoritarianism mainstream; DeSantis aims to enshrine it permanently. Our democracy depends on journalists providing accurate, objective coverage of DeSantis’ radicalism and authoritarianism.

Join us and demand that mainstream media stop normalizing authoritarians.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/17/2158643/-Mainstream-media-can-t-stay-passive-against-authoritarians

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