Several days ago the most comprehensively documented and carefully written account of the mainstream media’s toxic and ultimately self-destructive relationship with Donald Trump was published by Columbia Journalism Review. And if you haven’t heard about it, then that doesn’t surprise me, because the reaction from the rest of the mainstream media (including its reliably voluble and strident online commentariat) has been notably muted as well.
The reason is that the piece from CJR (a reliably institutional media organ, informally the dean of its academic wing) was a thoroughly sourced and timelined four-part series by ex–New York Times reporter Jeff Gerth about how Russiagate — which now best describes the media’s conduct in publishing, amplifying, and laundering what turned out to be partisan-concocted bunk about Trump’s purported treasonous compromise by the Russian government — ended up destroying its institutional credibility. It opens by noting that prior to Trump’s taking office (not winning the election, mind you, but taking office) the mainstream media held a net positive rating among Americans in institutional reputation, but that rating now hovers around a 26 percent level of credibility. And more than anything else, it was their recklessness in pursuing the fantasy of Russiagate that frittered away that institutional capital.
I may return later to expand upon the full import of Gerth’s remarkably well-reported piece — it is a very long, very detailed read chockablock full of journalists politely shoving one another under the bus retrospectively; this has special appeal for me — but for some of you it may be a story you felt you already understood instinctively. Perhaps so, but you will shocked to relive once again the details of how each media outlet, rogue tweet, and intelligence agency leaking scurrilous rumors sold to them by the Clinton campaign ended up forming a massive political and media hurricane, the eye of which was completely hollow all along. As all of these people and institutions spiraled upward in a cyclonic hysteria and standards dropped and all skepticism was sheared away in the winds, so too did their journalistic credibility spiral downward, into an abyss from which it has not yet been retrieved and likely never will.
Gerth’s piece holds the black mirror up to its intended audience. (Columbia Journalism Review’s audience is, its title suggests, fellow journalists.) That’s why I see few people (and those at the New York Times in particular) willing to gaze into it. Better to move on, perhaps indirectly acknowledge mistakes, and whatever you do, don’t be seen in public looking back. Don’t look now. That is a mistake, I fear, because as Nic Roeg would have told you, past is sometimes premonition.