D.C. media is now focused on confrontational coverage and approved narratives

Growing up in the countryside perhaps provided enhanced opportunities to observe natural things closely, undistracted by urban crowds and sounds. On occasion, massive flocks of birds, hundreds of them resting in adjacent trees would, on an unheard signal, take sudden simultaneous flight. En masse, they’d fly up together, swooping around, first this way, then on another signal, the opposite direction as united squadrons on a mission.

I think of those scenes often these days, watching our national media attempt to cover a historic pandemic and our messy 59th presidential selection process, both at the same time and both using a new 21st-century template.

White House leaders have long had the presidential bully pulpit to draw attention to select subjects. Think Teddy Roosevelt on trust-busting, his cousin Franklin Roosevelt on the Depression, then a world war, and John F. Kennedy on space exploration.

If a president said something, it was by definition news. Today, starting at dawn most days and at times running til after midnight, President Donald Trump uses his Twitter account to say way too many things to his 81 million followers, some seeming to suggest violence. Most are inconsequential, often misspelled stream-of-consciousness thoughts, even a cockamamie conspiracy theory about a TV host who’s now slid to the dark side of Trump opposition.

Virtually all of them are treated as news. This greatly pleases this president, who relishes such constant attention even when it damages and detracts from his long-term policy goals or short-term reelection goal. The tendency of news people, the late Democrat Adlai Stevenson once said, is to “separate the wheat from the chaff, and then print the chaff.”

Trump supporters will say he’s a genius at distracting D.C. media with substance-free messages that consume the well-paid time of these Eastern elites. There is an element of truth to this claim about the man who brought the mentality of a successful reality show executive producer into the White House.

But inadvertently, the Capitol media’s willingness to be so manipulated also reveals a disturbing, little-noticed change in the idea of what is journalism today. There has always been bias and subjectivity in the daily news business, not just in what was written or said by those men and women and their editors but, more importantly, in what was ignored or dismissed derisively and briefly.

Speaking from some decades of personal experience, in bygone times, each individual story was generally constructed to recount the who, what, when, where and why of the subject at hand, including select background as necessary. It was a stand-alone story.

No longer. Today, there is a narrative, a story template that each report must fit into. Those that don’t fit, like your high school jersey, get dismissed or ignored.

Oh, and narratives prefer actors, not reporters. We’ve witnessed numerous confrontational performances by journalists, who could gain lucrative book contracts from such virtuous notoriety. Professional journalists should be adversaries questioning, challenging authority, not antagonists.

Truth be told, in an Age of Outrage that assesses little consequence for incorrect, incomplete or even fictitious “news,” confrontational coverage does produce more profitable clicks and viewers. That was reflected in last week’s media layoffs, deleting some more of the few surviving play-it-straight journalists.

Now, predictability has always been highly valued in human storytelling. There is a reason, for instance, that David always defeats Goliath. And we keep telling that tale through countless iterations of Rocky Balboa, Jason Bourne and the like. Or the Cinderella fable through “My Fair Lady” and “Pretty Woman.” You’ll know the apocalypse has arrived when a Hallmark Channel movie ends sadly.

Attentive news consumers noticed this spring the widespread coverage out of Washington of the government’s overblown reactions throughout the pandemic. No, you didn’t. There was none. The narrative was totally blind and accepting. A trillion dollars is nowhere near enough. How about two trillion? Spend all you want. We’ll print more.

At the start, COVID-19 news coverage was the end-of-the-world-we-all-could-die kind. Each day’s scary, but estimated national death toll was delivered in the spirit of see, we told you so, clear evidence that the lockdown-obedience narrative was imperative. And realistically, who dared argue over the ominous, unknown possibilities of an invisible virus?Now that some of us have survived, the narrative is slipping into we-can’t-let-up-or-it-will-come-back. And no one on any side is prepared to give credence to another, mask or no mask.

In the Washington media’s case, the predictable narrative continues the long-running Trump-is-unfit-for-office theme. There’s ample evidence for that, much of it provided willfully by Trump. But it all began on election night in 2016. It took us down that manufactured, dead-end Russia collusion trail. And then the PR ploy impeachment effort that was DOA.

And in a weird way, all this really helps Trump create the them vs. us scenario so necessary in democratic elections. His supporters understandably see the credible image of a warrior under constant, withering attack from them, eliciting an admiration that helps explain Trump’s successful fundraising and recently improved poll numbers, especially in swing states.

And we’re back to those massed flocks of birds flying here and there in feathered unison for reasons we don’t hear but now understand a little.

This story was originally published June 2, 2020 at 9:48 AM with the headline "D.C. media is now focused on confrontational coverage and approved narratives."