With a lot at stake, Big Media tries rising to the occasion

Image by Mohamed Hassan

You might think the national news media are courageously exposing the dangers and harms of the Donald Trump administration. Or you might think they’re cowering and groveling in the face of Trump’s likely retribution. Either way, you only have to wait about 20 minutes and you’ll get more evidence for your side.

Media critics have made a cottage industry out of slamming the press, with a special focus on corporate, for-profit owners who have meddled in their newsrooms’ journalism to soften it and protect their other business interests. Certainly, there’s evidence. The billionaire owners of The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, for two instances, have done this and disgraced themselves.

Then again, to choose a few examples to the contrary, the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal has editorialized repeatedlyy against Trump policies and revealed lapses in national security communications. While the owner of CBS is weakheartedly considering settling Trump’s meritless lawsuit against the network’s 60 Minutes news show, the show has aired segments critical of the government almost every week since Trump regained office. Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos decreed the Opinions section would limit its range of topics and restrict viewpoints – seemingly to curry Trump’s favor – yet Post columnist Dana Milbank savaged Trump in a commentary a mere two days later. The Post continues to report aggressively, including this exclusive Sunday night. The owner of The Atlantic, Laurene Powell Jobs, is a billionaire, but she wavered not at all through the publication’s remarkable Signalgate coverage and the barrage of flak it brought.

Few other kinds of businesses operate this way, but journalism ethics call for owners and business department executives to allow newsroom professionals to produce their work independently and without influence from financial and political considerations. It’s why we see internal protests and resignations when C-suite executives infringe upon that. Opinion pieces that represent the viewpoint of the organization are the only exceptions.

Despite the seemingly regular exceptions, and Fox News, of course, I think major national news organizations deserve more credit than they’re getting for documenting the many disasters of the second Trump administration so far. But I wanted a second, expert opinion.

My department colleague, Dr. Wilson Lowrey, an internationally recognized authority on media organizations, believes major outlets have been “somewhat less aggressive” in covering Trump’s second term than his first. “The first time around,” he wrote in an email, “the political professional class (lawyers, journalists, government officials, military) were so outraged and this was so new — this fueled the perceived imperative to contain it as well as the sense that it was possible to contain it. … This time around, I detect a bit of resignation.”

But he sees good work being done. “I'd stop short of saying U.S. legacy media (New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, NPR, etc.) are shirking their professional duty in their news reporting, at least to this point.”

yes, the wall street journal faces less risk of trump retribution than more liberal media but this april 7 editorial is still remarkable for it.

If Big Media disappoints, one reason is that it, like all big companies, is “risk averse,” Lowrey said. He points to Bezos’ decision to restrict the Post’s opinion section. “The political, economic and journalistic times are volatile, unpredictable, so he steered toward the middle, toward what he thinks is a relatively safe political haven where the Post can wait out the storm.”

Then there’s Trump. “Trump’s policies don’t always fall neatly in the left-right or Democrat-GOP dichotomy, and this may be sand in the gears of traditional political journalism. … The routines for covering this kind of presidential politics are not as well developed, perhaps leading to some hesitance, caution, a little confusion.”

And that supposed barrier between news decisions and business decisions? In Lowrey’s view, if it’s getting weaker that’s less because of owners decreeing violations and more because of an internal change in journalism culture. “Newsroom leaders are urged to ‘get real’ and get familiar with their organization's and the industry's alarming financial problems, and ‘pitch in’ and help” by taking steps to attract page views, subscribers, and social media followers.

The new culture does not necessarily mean pulling punches in coverage. “The legacy media are doing their job and doing it pretty well,” Lowrey said, “but in a ‘normal’ day to day way, waiting to see how Trump's seemingly self-destructive policies play out.”

Many critics, of course, think that media normalcy is not what’s needed right now.