My friend and Writing About Our Generation colleague Mitch Stephens was a journalism professor for decades and knows more about the history of journalism than pretty much anyone. Heck, he wrote the book on it, A History of News.

      So, when he says, as he does in his video on this site, “No, American Journalism Has Not Gotten Worse,”  implying that the current journalistic coverage of our presidential election, while not by any means great, probably isn’t that bad and surely no worse than political journalism has been for centuries, it’s an opinion that deserves respect.

      And he makes a pretty compelling case, delving into the rabid partisanship, insensitivity and stenographic obliviousness of American journalism’s past, even citing absurd contemporary criticism of George Washington.

      While he does acknowledge that we could do better today, he’s also demolishing a strawman, implying that today’s critics are suggesting the press has never before been this biased nor this irresponsible.

      No, that’s not the critique. We’re saying today’s journalism has to be better because of the momentous stakes of this particular election—something Mitch really doesn’t take note of. We’re saying it has to have learned from the egregious mistakes of the past.

      So let me disagree a bit with my esteemed colleague. Mitch was trying to put the press’ current failures into context. I’m trying to hold them to a higher standard.

      Yes, in the distant and recent past, our journalism has utterly failed the public. Still, that doesn’t remotely absolve today’s media from criticism of the way they are reporting this election now.

      Unlike in the past, where news outlets were avowedly partisan, were always speaking to the choir and their readers knew what to expect, today’s prominent mainstream media appears to be more impartial, considers itself more impartial and attempts to appeal to all segments of the political spectrum.

      So, while the bias and prejudices might not be as blatantly obvious as in past times, the framing, headline writing, sanitizing and, to use the newly coined word, sanewashing—by the press of bizarre, racist, fact-free gibberish and lies that issue regularly from the mouth of Donald Trump lets us all down.

      In doing so, in its apparent attempts to be fair, to be perceived as objective, the faults of today’s journalism are consequently I suggest much more insidious than the journalism of the past.

      Today’s press hasn’t fully grasped—or refuses to grasp—that this is not an election between, say, two views of taxation. It is not an election between an alliance-based foreign policy and an isolationist one, between individuals of equal commitment to the Constitution and to the rule of law.

      It is not an election between slightly differing views of the future.

      But by reporting it that way, by both-sidesing almost every issue, every quote, every use of the trope, “on the one hand this, on the other hand that,” our journalism makes the case that it is. That is a tremendous dereliction of responsibility.

      When you place, as today’s coverage has done, outright lies and facts on an even footing, it suggests there’s no fact-based reality. That normalization degrades our politics—particularly when it’s coming from “the paper of record.” 

      Some examples:

      Not that long ago, Trump, ex-president and GOP nominee for the last three elections, told a rally in Erie, Pa. that if he returned to the White House, he’d make sure police would brutalize the public.

      “See, we have to let the police do their job.” Trump said, even if “they have to be extraordinarily rough.” The solution to rampant crime, he said, would be “one really violent day” by the cops. Or even just “one rough hour. And I mean real rough. The word will be out. And it will end immediately...”

      It was described, by some, as a call for “a national day of violence.” But that wasn’t the way our national media described it. .

      The avowedly non-partisan New York Times headline said “Trump says one violent day would end property crime.’” The story that went with it said, almost bemusedly, that the remarks “were the latest variation on a longtime theme for Mr. Trump.”  

      Some other examples:

• The Times described JD Vance’s denunciation of “childless cat ladies” and his lie about Haitian immigrants eating dogs and cats as “combative conservatism.”

• “Christians,” Trump told a church group, “get out and vote, just this time.… In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.” The Times interpreted wrote that the former president was “suggesting that if elected he would address [conservative Christian] concerns sufficiently enough that they would no longer need to be politically active.”

• When other top Republicans lied about Haitian immigrants, the Times’ headline said “Republicans Seize on False Theories” not noting that it was the Republicans themselves who created those theories.   

      I’m spending so much time here on The Times not because everybody in America reads it, but because it sets the tone for the rest of American journalism, for our national conversation. What you see in The Times this morning will be what filters down to network news and radio reports and podcasts and tweets and TikTok videos and social media. It will set the agenda.

      Unlike partisan criticism of George Washington, this refusal to call a spade a spade, to take a stand with fact-based reality, normalizes Trump and risks the end of our experiment in democracy.

      That’s why I think today’s journalism is, indeed, so bad.