And she’s getting away with it. Mainstream journalists can carp and whine about this all they want, but when less than a third of Americans trust the mass media, few folks are listening to them. What’s been really striking this year is that while traditionally deep distrust of the mainstream press has long been the province of right-wing Republicans, now it’s liberals who once cheered for the media to do better who seem to be giving up on them.There is plenty of good journalism even in some of those fucking outlets I hate, but politics journalism is bad, the political journalists are bad, and, much more than in the past, all news is subsumed under political coverage, with the politics journalists getting free license to run wild over every topic with "news analysis." That's just like, uh, your opinion, man.
I saw a social media exchange recently which clarified this pretty well. Ryan Mac, a good New York Times reporter who is coming out with a book (with Kate Conger) about Musk/Twitter, was on the receiving end of criticism about New York Times coverage of Musk. Mac got tetchy, which I understand, because his coverage is good, but it gets buried under coverage like this from America's Worst Political Reporter, Jeremy Peters:
Mac's problem should be with Peters and his editors for tarnishing the brand, not random complainers on social media, but I get that he can't actually say that.