{"id":853,"date":"2024-11-11T20:12:48","date_gmt":"2024-11-11T20:12:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/?page_id=853"},"modified":"2024-11-15T17:23:22","modified_gmt":"2024-11-15T17:23:22","slug":"under-media-oligarchy-profit-and-power-trumped-democracy-once-again","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2024\/section-5-news-and-journalism\/under-media-oligarchy-profit-and-power-trumped-democracy-once-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Under media oligarchy: Profit and power trumped democracy once again"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Prof. Victor Pickard<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

C. Edwin Baker Professor of media policy and political economy at the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Annenberg School for Communication, where he co-directs the Media, Inequality & Change (MIC) Center. He has written or edited six books, including America\u2019s Battle for Media Democracy<\/em> and Democracy without Journalism<\/em>?

Twitter: @VWPickard<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bluesky: @victorpickard.bsky.social<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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U.S. Election 2024<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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51. The powers that aren\u2019t: News organizations and the 2024 election<\/a> (Dr Nik Usher)
52. Newspaper presidential endorsements: Silence during consequential moment in history<\/a> (Dr Kenneth Campbell)
53. Trump after news: a moral voice in an empty room?<\/a> (Prof Matt Carlson, Prof Sue Robinson, Prof Seth C. Lewis)
54. Under media oligarchy: profit and power trumped democracy once again<\/a> (Prof Victor Pickard)
55. The challenge of pro-democracy journalism<\/a> (Prof Stephen D. Reese)
56. Grievance and animosity: Fracturing the digital news ecosystem<\/a> (Dr Scott A. Eldridge II)
57. Considering the risk of attacks on journalists during the U.S. election<\/a> (Dr Valerie Belair-Gagnon)
58. What can sentiment in cable news coverage tell us about the 2024 campaign?<\/a> (Dr Gavin Ploger, Dr Stuart Soroka)
59. The case for happy election news: Why it matters and what stands in the way<\/a> (Dr Ruth Palmer, Prof Stephanie Edgerly, Prof Emily K. Vraga)
60. Broadcast television use and the 2024 U.S. presidential election<\/a> (Jessica Maki, Prof Michael W. Wagner)
61. Kamala Harris' representation in mainstream and Black media<\/a> (Dr Miya Williams Fayne, Prof Danielle K. Brown)
62. Team Trump and the altercation at the Arlington military cemetery<\/a> (Dr Natalie Jester)
63. Pulling their punches: On the limits of sports metaphor in political media<\/a> (Prof Michael L. Butterworth)<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Once again, the 2024 election provided us an opportunity to test whether the U.S. media system can withstand the pressures of an authoritarian threat. And once again, we observed a media system that far too often privileged profit over democratic concerns. This capitulation was, in some ways, more subtle than what we witnessed before, especially in 2016, when coverage of Trump\u2019s campaign was marked by\u00a0overt sensationalism<\/a>. Yet, media\u2019s role during the 2024 election season was no less troubling for what it bodes for U.S. democracy\u2019s future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Media malpractice<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Media outlets should have been well prepared this time. Everyone knew exactly what to expect. There were no ambivalences or ambiguities about Trump\u2019s incessant lying or his rabidly xenophobic, transphobic, racist, and misogynistic rhetoric. And yet, despite it all, our media institutions didn\u2019t rise to the occasion to challenge the obvious dangers that Trump posed to democracy. While billionaire owners\u00a0blocked endorsements<\/a>\u00a0of Kamala Harris or outright\u00a0weaponized their media properties<\/a>, as in the case of Elon Musk and X, much media coverage was, once again, complicit in normalizing Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From \u201csanewashing<\/a>\u201d (sanitizing Trump\u2019s outlandish rhetoric and behavior<\/a>) to false equivalence<\/a>, from trivializing policy implications to horse race coverage and the fetishizing of polls, we saw it all over again. The inveterate media critic Jay Rosen had long pleaded<\/a> with journalists to emphasize \u201cnot the odds, but the stakes.\u201d But too often, milquetoast media coverage<\/a> reverted to a kind of he said\/she said anodyne \u201cbothsidesing\u201d narration that left audiences insufficiently alarmed at what policies Trump was proposing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be sure, it\u2019s tempting to conclude that, in an era of social media influencers and innumerable podcasters, legacy media no longer matter. In this light, blaming news media institutions seems as pointless as it is inaccurate. After all, few Trump voters are turning to the New York Times<\/em> for guidance on how to vote. But our elite and incumbent media still play an outsized role in setting discursive parameters and establishing official narratives. The border crisis, run-amok urban crime, the tanking economy\u2014all these crises, to varying degrees, were manufactured and amplified through media. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such recurring narrative patterns bring into focus more subtle and less measurable\u2014though potentially more profound\u2014media effects worthy of further consideration. In addition to the general problem of pervasive, low-quality information, a long-term problem is the ideological policing and hegemonic narratives that accrete over time. I flag these issues for future areas of concern that deserve more attention from media scholars, who tend to focus on short-term effects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Uncovering structural roots\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we were to pan out for a moment and consider the big picture, we might be more likely to see how the predictable patterns of selection, omission, and emphasis in media coverage suggest a common structural underpinning\u2014that many problems in standard election reporting stem from deeper pathologies, especially those connected to commercial logics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Extreme commercialism<\/a> afflicts most aspects of the U.S. media system. Pegging news media so directly to market relationships has led to systemic failures<\/a>: Racial and class-based redlining, market censorship, ever-expanding news deserts<\/a>, and degraded information. It also creates the conditions for monopolistic control over entire sectors of our communication and information infrastructures that allow oligarchs<\/a> to capture them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, \u201cmedia oligarchy\u201d is an apt phrase for describing our current state of affairs: From the right-wing tech titans such as Elon Musk and his ilk, to opportunistic monopolists like Jeff Bezos, to the villainous media baron Rupert Murdoch and his progeny. These\u00a0unaccountable billionaires own and control vast swathes of U.S. information and communication infrastructure\u2014a dangerous predicament according to the most elementary democratic theory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The challenge ahead<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately, these moments of crisis can be clarifying. They cast into stark relief the power structures that shape our media. They illuminate just how ill-equipped our media institutions are to perform the basic tasks of democracy. And they point to pressure points that we can exploit to create a better system, one that actually serves our information and communication needs.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fact that Trump prevailed is a damning statement on the health of our media systems. These institutions have all failed us. This means that we must radically reform<\/a> them, especially our media, at a systemic level from the ground up. But to do so requires a structural critique of commercial media\u2014one that treats capitalism as an independent variable\u2014and the anti-democratic institutions that sustain these systems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most media scholarship, especially in the U.S., takes the commercial system for granted<\/a>, treating capitalism as the natural steward of journalism. While journalism scholars are quick to indict the practices and routines of individual news organizations and journalists, better norms will not save us. We need a structural overhaul of our media institutions. This requires renewed emphasis on political economy<\/a> and policy as well as ideology and discourse. We have much work ahead of us. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prof. Victor Pickard C. Edwin Baker Professor of media policy and political economy at the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Annenberg School for Communication, where he co-directs the Media, Inequality & Change (MIC) Center. He has written or edited six books, including America\u2019s Battle for Media Democracy and Democracy without Journalism? Twitter: @VWPickard Bluesky: @victorpickard.bsky.social Once again, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":1014,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-853","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nUnder media oligarchy: Profit and power trumped democracy once again - Election Analysis - United States<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2024\/section-5-news-and-journalism\/under-media-oligarchy-profit-and-power-trumped-democracy-once-again\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Under media oligarchy: Profit and power trumped democracy once again - Election Analysis - United States\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Prof. Victor Pickard C. Edwin Baker Professor of media policy and political economy at the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Annenberg School for Communication, where he co-directs the Media, Inequality & Change (MIC) Center. He has written or edited six books, including America\u2019s Battle for Media Democracy and Democracy without Journalism? 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