Monday Edition: The Latest Media Meltdown
Plus: What the data shows about our politics obsession.

Hulk Hogan on stage at Trump’s Madison Square Garden Rally yesterday.
1. 4 Charts That Explain the Latest Media Meltdown

The Los Angeles Times and Washington Post’s decision not to endorse a presidential candidate has journalists wringing their hands, while the general public is unfazed. The following charts highlight why the two groups are seeing this so differently. (NYT)
Objectivity: Unlike the vast majority of Americans, most journalists don’t think all sides deserve equal coverage.
Just the facts, please: A 2019 RAND Corporation report found U.S. journalism has “shifted away from objective news and offers more opinion-based content that appeals to emotion and relies heavily on argumentation and advocacy,” but nearly 60% of Americans say news outlets should present the facts without interpreting them.
Trust: The media’s credibility has been tanking for years, yet the industry’s done little to nothing to fix the practices that fuel this distrust.
Worldview: Taken as a whole, journalists are much more liberal than the American people.
Bubba’s Two Cents
The Los Angeles Times and Washington Post’s non-endorsements might signal a turning point where media execs realize audiences don’t care what news outlets think.
This reality check has partly been brought on by business concerns. In addition to declining credibility and audience share, many media outlets are running in the red (The Post reportedly lost $100 million last year).
Many mainstream news outlets desperately need to change up their strategy and perception. My sense is that audiences want a service that delivers facts and reporting, not blog post-style opinion essays from so-called “thought leaders.”
But there’s a big obstacle standing in the way. While the people who run these media businesses might be starting to get it, too many reporters still don’t. There’s no shortage of journalists who are more concerned with being advocates than reporting facts.
The “dissenting” journalists at the Post are outraged their transparently left-leaning paper is going to at least pretend at objectivity by not endorsing Kamala Harris. These reporters think they’re brave truth-tellers standing up against the creeping threat of authoritarianism. Since “democracy dies in darkness,” they see themselves as the last lights.
What do you see?
2. One Trend Shows How Politics-Obsessed We’ve Become

In a sign of how all-consuming politics has become, the share of people who say their lives will be greatly affected depending on who wins the presidential election has spiked significantly over the past few decades. (NBC News)
A recent NBC News poll: 62% of registered voters think the 2024 race winner will make a “great deal of difference” to them personally, the highest number since NBC News began tracking the question in 1992.
Since the 90s, there’s been a steady upward climb:
Oct. 1996: 21%
Oct. 2004: 45%
Oct. 2012: 55%
Oct. 2020: 56%
Context: Polarization and partisan hostility has risen substantially since the 90s — basically we have a much more negative view of our political opponents these days, making it a much bigger deal when our side loses.
Bubba’s Two Cents
You hear it all the time — whether it’s conservative pundits claiming we’re going to “lose the country” after every election, or liberals saying … well, pretty much exactly the same thing in fancier words. Doom is now baked into our politics. Is the prevailing vibe, that electoral stakes are extremely high because things are so bad, correct?
As University of Oxford professor Max Roser’s excellent essay, “The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better,” suggests: no — but also, yes.
3. 5 “Problematic” Opinions That Are Held by Most Americans

Many views labeled as “problematic” by progressives and journalists are actually mainstream opinions in America.
Mass deportation: In 2017, UCLA professor Kelly Lytle Hernandez echoed a prevailing elite media opinion when she argued that “America’s mass deportation system is rooted in racism.”
What Americans think: A majority of Americans, including 1 in 4 Democrats, support mass deportations of illegal immigrants, per a Scripps News/Ipsos survey from September.
Voter ID: State courts, professors and Democratic politicians have claimed laws requiring voters to present photo identification before casting their ballots are discriminatory.
What Americans think: A whopping 84% of U.S. voters back voter ID laws, according to a new Gallup survey.
Affirmative action: Last year, Elie Mystal, a justice correspondent for The Nation, claimed opposition to affirmative action in college admissions was a product of “the soft bigotry of parents, whose commitment to integration and equality turns cold the moment their little cherubs fail to get into their first choice of college or university.”
What Americans think: A plurality (50%) of Americans disapprove of universities taking race and ethnicity into account when admitting students, and 74% say “when making decisions about hiring and promotions, companies and organizations should take only a person’s qualifications into account, even if it results in less diversity.”
Gender ideology: Last year, the Biden administration proposed a rule which would prohibit schools from banning transgender athletes from sports.
What Americans think: While Americans oppose discrimination against transgender people, more than 6 in 10 say trans women and girls should not be allowed to compete against biological women and girls, and nearly 60% of U.S. adults “don’t believe it’s even possible to be a gender that differs from that assigned at birth.”
Drug testing: Writing in The New York Times in 2017, Cornell professor Jamila Michener claimed laws requiring welfare recipients to undergo drug testing resulted in stigmas and racist stereotypes.
What Americans think: As a recent San Francisco ballot measure showed, even Americans in liberal cities often support drug testing requirements for people who receive government assistance.
Bubba’s Two Cents
It seems like many people are waking up to the reality that America isn’t quite the progressive utopia they’d imagined. And it’s leading to some pretty cynical backtracking. For instance, some Democrats are now falsely claiming the party has never opposed voter ID laws, Dem presidential nominee Kamala Harris has tacked to the center on multiple issues and transgender rights talk was glaringly absent at the Democratic National Convention.
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