I am not surprised by the mainstream media’s consternation about Trump winning the US election because I understand the nostrum – at some level we all do – that people are often examples of what they criticize. It takes one to know one. People living in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
Mainstream media’s blind spot: Blaming government
But mainstream media has a blind spot. They simply do not appear to understand their crucial role in electing Trump.
So let’s start with some assumptions:
- Most people don’t understand government and what it does or doesn’t do. Those who do understand government know that governments mostly do their job reasonably well.
- Media almost exclusively reports on government screwups and bungling. For the past few months, I have studied news reports on governments and just about all of them concern screwups and bungling, dishonesty, malfeasance, unfairness, lateness etc. You will NEVER see a breaking news story that says “Government department does its job well”. And I mean NEVER.
- People who don’t understand government well or who are not close to it see a steady diet of media stories on government screwups and bungling.
- Populist leaders in democracies: Trump, the Fords, Boris Johnston all presented credentials as outsiders. They are outside of government and carefully curate their outsider status to court the majority sector of the population that understand – thanks to the mainstream media – that all governments are hotbeds of bungling and screwups and simply cannot do anything right.
The outsider: Fixing broken government
With those assumptions, let’s look at the just completed US election. First, let’s think about what Trump ran to lead. The answer is: the Government of the USA. He ran as an outsider just as he did in 2016. He downplayed any and all insider credentials and said “I’ll fix it”.
What will he fix? The answer: Broken Government. Who broke it? Insiders.
Who are the credentialed insiders with government experience? The answer: those who are in government who only screw up and bungle all the live long day.
Juxtaposed against this are reports on how the economy is doing well, interest rates are coming down, stock markets are up, GDP is modestly rising.
All those things are true but none of these things are ever explained as government achievements. They are separate occurrences somewhere out there in the broader ecosystem. And reports of these happenings are never reported as ‘breaking news’ except on business TV channels.
Media drives people to the outsiders
Mainstream media does not seem to know that its reports on government are relentlessly mocking and negative – they drive people towards those whose credentials present as extreme outsiders. The more outside, the better.
In one particularly ‘unself-aware’ set of news reports, the mainstream media noted that Trump was saying things that his advisors did not want him to say. He was going off script. He was unhinged etc.
They actually presented this as a problem for Trump.
Earth to mainstream media: this is not a problem – it’s an asset.
For the majority – with media assisted views that governments only screw things up – Trump was reinforcing his key asset of being a true outsider. He had handlers but ignored them. What better evidence that Trump is your man. And the mainstream media enabled that story.
Looking northward from Washington, Pierre Poilievre is exquisitely fluent in positioning himself and his party as outsiders and exploits both the mainstream media that almost exclusively report bungling as well as most people’s lack of knowledge of what government does well. He is really good at blaming all bungling on Mr. Trudeau. And a lot of it sticks. Even when it shouldn’t.
And mainstream media seems to complete the hatchet job by reporting that it is not all the government’s fault the forests are burning, low lying areas are flooding and the Canadian dollar is falling. What that means is that when things do improve, government cannot take credit even when their deft and responsible management is the reason that things may be going better.
So when Trump won, did we hear anything at all about the medias’ role in relentlessly pummeling government to the almost complete exclusion of any ascription of credit?
Nope.