{"id":225816,"date":"2021-01-24T09:10:08","date_gmt":"2021-01-24T09:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=225816"},"modified":"2021-01-27T04:51:15","modified_gmt":"2021-01-27T04:51:15","slug":"the-echo-chamber-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=225816","title":{"rendered":"The Echo Chamber Era"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matt Taibbi \u2013 TK News Jan 22, 2021<\/strong><\/h1>\n

A day after Joe Biden’s inauguration, the headline in Axios <\/em>read: \u201cTrust in media hits a new low.<\/a>\u201d Felix Salmon wrote that \u201cfor the first time ever, fewer than half of all Americans have trust in traditional media.\u201d The Edelman survey showed overall faith in the press dropping to 46%.<\/p>\n

The traditional explanation for this phenomenon is that Republicans hate the press a lot, but Democrats just a little. The Axios <\/em>story bore this out somewhat, as only 18% of Republicans reported trusting media, versus 57% of Democrats.<\/p>\n

Still, 57% of half your potential audience is nothing to brag about, when you\u2019re in the trust business. Other numbers, like 56% of respondents believing journalists are \u201cpurposely trying to mislead people,\u201d or 58% thinking that \u201cmost news organizations are more concerned with supporting an ideology\u2026 than with informing the public” are more ominous.<\/p>\n

Media critics who work in the corporate press, like Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post, <\/em>seem determined to look everywhere but inward for solutions. The dominant legend in our business is that if Republicans believe in fairy tales like Q and \u201cStop the Steal,\u201d the traditional press can do nothing but stand its ground.<\/p>\n

Sullivan\u2019s reaction<\/a> to at-times \u201cembarrassing\u201d Inauguration Day coverage was an injunction to reporters to resist the temptation to try to appear more balanced by showing \u201ctoughness\u201d with regard to the incoming Biden regime. If anything, Sullivan said, the press should stand even taller in its opposition to red-state lie merchants like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, \u201cwithout fearing that they\u2019d be called partisan.\u201d<\/p>\n

Karen Attiah, the Post\u2019s <\/em>global opinions editor, took the same approach<\/a>. She wrote that Trump had been caused in part by the media\u2019s penchant for \u201cbalance\u201d and \u201cpresenting both sides.\u201d Going forward, it will therefore be necessary to work even harder avoid missteps like Politico\u2019s <\/em>much-criticized decision to publish Ben Shapiro, which Attiah decried as a decision defended with the \u201crusty armor of both-sidesism.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s astonishing that after so many years of decline in trust in media \u2014 this phenomenon has been going on for over a decade now, something I first started noticing when I published The Great Derangement <\/em>back in 2008 \u2014 media people still think the issue is a mathematical question of \u201csides,\u201d with widespread audience revulsion a kind of reward for their unflinching correctitude.<\/p>\n

Sullivan was a lot closer to the truth when she warned of being seduced by the return of a Biden administration that closely reflects \u201cour values,\u201d which she described as being like the world as represented in West Wing<\/em>: celebrating \u201cmulticulturalism, a belief in the principles of liberal democracy, and a kind of wonky idealism.\u201d<\/p>\n

West Wing <\/em>was General Hospital <\/em>for rich white liberals, a seven-season love letter to the enlightened attitudes of the Bobo-in-Paradise demographic. If that\u2019s the self-image of the national press, it\u2019s no wonder they make people want to vomit. The coverage of Biden\u2019s inauguration, another celebration of those attitudes, was an almost perfect mathematical inverse of late-stage Trump reporting, a monument to groveling sycophancy.<\/p>\n

John Heileman at MSNBC compared<\/a> Biden\u2019s speech to Abe Lincoln\u2019s second inaugural, and suggested that the sight of \u201cthe Clintons, the Bushes, and the Obamas\u201d gathered for the event was like \u201cthe Marvel superheroes all back in one place\u201d (this was not the first post-election <\/a>Avengers <\/a><\/em>comparison<\/a> to be heard on cable). Rachel Maddow talked about going through \u201chalf a box of Kleenex<\/a>\u201d as she watched the proceedings. Chris Wallace on Fox <\/em>said Biden\u2019s lumbering speech was \u201cthe best inaugural address I ever heard<\/a>,\u201d John Kennedy\u2019s \u201cAsk Not\u201d speech included. The joyful tone was set the night before by CNN\u2019s David Challen, who said lights along the Washington Mall were like \u201cextensions of Joe Biden\u2019s arms embracing America.\u201d<\/p>\n

As these neo-Soviet ministrations spread across the airwaves, an opposite storyline was discarded. From the Capitol riot on, we\u2019d been warned about a sequel act of violence by Trump supporters. On January 11th, ABC reported<\/a> that an internal FBI memo had \u201creceived information about an unidentified armed group\u201d planning a \u201chuge uprising\u201d if efforts were made to remove Donald Trump via the 25th Amendment, while protesters were planning to \u201cstorm\u201d capitols in \u201call 50 states.\u201d<\/p>\n

We were shown how 25,000 National Guard troop<\/a>s were deployed to protect the capital, with attendant subplots about an unusual effort to politically screen those Guardsmen. “While we have no intelligence indicating an insider threat,\u201d Defense Secretary Chris Miller said<\/a>, \u201cwe are leaving no stone unturned in securing the capital.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond the 50-state threat, what if Trump just wouldn\u2019t leave? That was the subject of countless stories across all four years of the Trump experience, with Vanity Fair\u2019s \u201c<\/em>No One Knows How to Get Trump to Leave In January<\/a>\u201d being a typical example. They speculated that the Secret Service might have to pull an old landlord\u2019s trick:<\/p>\n

[The Secret Service] could also simply do the equivalent of changing the locks: \u201cWhen the staff leaves on January 19, don\u2019t let them back into the complex the next day,\u201d an ex-agent said. \u201cHe can\u2019t do anything without his staff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Should we worry about martial law? Before the inauguration, USA Today <\/em>and multiple other outlets wondered what would happen if Trump invoked the Insurrection Act<\/a>, especially after the CEO of My Pillow, Michael Lindell, was spotted entering the White House with a document<\/a> full of notes that apparently contained suggestions for invoking military rule.<\/p>\n

On Inauguration Day these stories melted away in silence. Trump and his wife Melania ditched the White House more or less without event<\/a> Wednesday morning, unless one counts the unauthorized use of Village People hit \u201cYMCA\u201d as an exit tune (\u201cit would seem his abusive use of our music has finally ended,\u201d the band said<\/a> in a statement). In localities around the country, there were but a few scattered reports about tiny or nonexistent demonstrations at state capitols:<\/p>\n

\n

In all of New York and California, a single protester showed up at the state capital to protest. So terrifying. pic.twitter.com\/cwiQRx2dqF<\/a><\/p>\n

— Lee Fang (@lhfang) January 20, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n