Prof. Stephen D. Reese
Jesse H. Jones Professor in the School of Journalism & Media at the University of Texas at Austin. His teaching and research consider questions of press performance, including the sociology of news, media framing of public issues, and the globalization of journalism. A fellow of the International Communication Association, his most recent book is The crisis of the institutional press (2021, Polity).
Website: www.stephendreese.com
Email: steve.reese@utexas.edu
U.S. Election 2024
51. The powers that aren’t: News organizations and the 2024 election (Dr Nik Usher)
52. Newspaper presidential endorsements: Silence during consequential moment in history (Dr Kenneth Campbell)
53. Trump after news: a moral voice in an empty room? (Prof Matt Carlson, Prof Sue Robinson, Prof Seth C. Lewis)
54. Under media oligarchy: profit and power trumped democracy once again (Prof Victor Pickard)
55. The challenge of pro-democracy journalism (Prof Stephen D. Reese)
56. Grievance and animosity: Fracturing the digital news ecosystem (Dr Scott A. Eldridge II)
57. Considering the risk of attacks on journalists during the U.S. election (Dr Valerie Belair-Gagnon)
58. What can sentiment in cable news coverage tell us about the 2024 campaign? (Dr Gavin Ploger, Dr Stuart Soroka)
59. The case for happy election news: Why it matters and what stands in the way (Dr Ruth Palmer, Prof Stephanie Edgerly, Prof Emily K. Vraga)
60. Broadcast television use and the 2024 U.S. presidential election (Jessica Maki, Prof Michael W. Wagner)
61. Kamala Harris' representation in mainstream and Black media (Dr Miya Williams Fayne, Prof Danielle K. Brown)
62. Team Trump and the altercation at the Arlington military cemetery (Dr Natalie Jester)
63. Pulling their punches: On the limits of sports metaphor in political media (Prof Michael L. Butterworth)
In the 2024 election season a scandal-plagued, twice-impeached businessman with multiple bankruptcies (to name a few seemingly disqualifying traits) enjoyed rock-steady support among half the voting public. Part of the explanation lies in the way the asymmetric media and political ecosystems have mapped onto each other, supporting a dysfunctional detachment of much of the public from evidence-based voting. That evidence has been traditionally supplied by knowledge-producing institutions, including the press, which found itself under attack and increasingly mistrusted while struggling to promote a “democratic frame” (also described as through the “lens of democracy” or “democracy-worthy” coverage). In a 2016 analysis I thought voters would eventually realize that Trump couldn’t deliver on his MAGA promise to bring back a world gone by, but instead his “Us vs. Them” framing grew stronger, deflecting blame for any policy failures and leaving his support intact. His re-election ultimately followed, but not without taking a toll on the reality-based political infrastructure.
Tribes have been sorted more strongly now by partisanship, showing not just different policy preferences but mutually reinforcing divisions of class, geography, and faith. Cultural attachments have come to outweigh more material class interests that might otherwise affect voting preferences. Those on the losing side of capitalism’s growing wealth inequality may understandably lose faith in the system that allowed it—and its more abstract democratic values, which surveys showed had low priority among the electorate. Indeed, even authoritarianism has become more appealing if thought to operate on behalf of the right people in offering easy answers to long-simmering resentments. As a result, two major tribes appear now to occupy strikingly different worlds. In addition to being more White, fundamentalist, rural, and less educated, the psychology of Trump supporters showed them to be more politically intuitionist. Calls for national purity and fear of the “other,” especially the immigrant, appealed to them disproportionately. The anti-Trump tribe was, in contrast, relatively more rationalist in style, racially diverse, coalitionist, and upwardly mobile—less suspicious of elites and the knowledge-producing institutions associated with them, including journalism.
Thus, worrisome tribal differences have emerged in how members relate to empirical facts—with many voters either impervious to the truth, not exposed to it, or constructing their own reality. The “stolen 2020 election” became, of course, not just a matter for evidentiary dispute but an article of faith for MAGA Republicans. Those struggling to understand an increasingly complex world became easy prey to the over-simplified sureties of opportunistic leaders and monetizing grifters. They more likely embraced conspiracy theories, requiring a “leap of faith” into an insular, self-reinforcing world of epistemic closure. Its supporting media eco-system offered little impediment to lying and helped further amplify this tribal asymmetry. Success can be claimed despite contradicting evidence, with failure blamed on the “deep state” and the “enemy within.” The Trump-supporting Christian evangelical community models another kind of this faith-based conviction, which becomes an authoritarian impulse to the extent that it places a candidate beyond any moral framework, requiring only that self and tribal interests be served. This asymmetry is further reflected in the related challenge of mitigating disinformation. If found disproportionately on the right, which has been the case, then any effort to control it also appears disproportionate and subject to charges of partisan unfairness. The practice of factchecking, intended to settle questions of evidence, is similarly rejected by right-wing critics, who are more likely to charge bias in critiquing the factcheck itself.
In responding to this challenge, the traditional press has been an imperfect defender of democratic norms. The news institution has eroded, with new hybrid forms still emerging, but a core of accountability journalism remains intact and sets the tone for electoral coverage. Although journalists did adapt over the years to the norm-busting Trump, documenting his incessant lying and illiberal tendencies, the enduring institutional routines of balance, horse-race coverage, and “both sidesism” often have been out of step with the more one-sided democratic threat—like expecting sportsmanship in a street fight. Trump has exploited these routines for a long time, using the “birtherism” playbook to attack the candidacy of former president Obama. Similarly, he accused Kamala Harris without evidence of not having worked at McDonald’s in college as she claimed, with his campaign even staging a media-event of Trump posing for reporters at one of the burger shops wearing an employee apron. Rather than ignoring this transparent sideshow, journalists instinctively sought a response from Harris. At the corporate level, ownership pressure enforced this both-sidesism at two of the country’s most prominent news organizations, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, taking refuge in editorial “balance” to block at the last minute an already prepared endorsement for Harris.
This disconnect between the media and political eco-systems will not be soon resolved, but the press, especially at its accountability reporting core, must continue to do its job: countering the disinformation media space, emphasizing verification, resisting the amplification of extremist voices, and documenting illiberal threats. To serve its true function journalism must promote democracy and not normalize its collapse.