Surveying Media’s Perverse ‘Anti-Woke Centrism’

The defenestration of CNN chief Chris Licht, which was prompted by many contributing factors and was definitely not solely attributable to a staff-wide revolt over the network’s decision to host a townhall with Donald Trump, was preceded by a cavalcade of think pieces about his contributions to the network’s manifest deficiencies.

Many such offerings attributed the Licht-led network’s troubles to structural factors, the boss’s detachment from the day-to-day, and ambitious but destabilizing business ventures that didn’t pan out. One of the more intellectually honest efforts to explain CNN’s travails was penned by Washington Post opinion writer Perry Bacon Jr., who crystalized not only the problem afflicting this network but all news media in a tidy theory of everything: the press is just too darn centrist.

As Bacon notes, Licht assumed his position operating under the flawed assumption that he had taken control of a news outlet rather than an institution dedicated to providing a service to a narrow constituent group. In his role, he admonished journalists to “not virtue signal. Tell the truth. Ask questions getting at the truth.” The cad.

Licht also encouraged skepticism and the critical evaluation of the perspectives reinforced by the social biases dominant on America’s coasts. That is where it all went wrong, according to Bacon.

“Licht’s comments embody an anti-woke centrism that is increasingly prominent in American media and politics today, particularly among powerful White men who live on the coasts and don’t identify as Republicans or conservatives,” Bacon wrote. “By anti-woke, what I mean is skepticism of progressive causes and ideas, especially on issues of gender, race and sexuality.”

This is a valuable contention because it is a falsifiable premise. Its validity can be tested. In that effort, let’s survey the ostensibly centrist media landscape over the last 72 hours or so in relation to its coverage of issues with progressive valance — primarily, the culture war du jour over transitioning therapies for children.

Leading the D.C. bubble’s publication of record, Politico, this morning, reporter Liz Crampton previews a Democratic effort to blunt Republican attacks on progressive social engineering in public schools by throwing money at them. The contrast Democrats hope to establish is obvious, but not so obvious that the piece trusts you to draw the proper conclusions. So, it holds your hand and drags you toward them by summarizing Republican objections to, for example, the promotion of surgical and pharmaceutical remedies to gender dysphoria in minors.

Their social agenda also centered on passing legislation restricting the rights of trans children by banning minors from receiving gender-affirming care and requiring that student athletes play on sports teams correlating with their assigned sex at birth.

Hardly a neutral framing here. Nor is there any evidence that the outlet was reluctant to engage with subject matter that pings the cultural nerve centers of left-wing social reformers. But maybe this is an outlier.

What about Axios — increasingly media’s go-to daily tip sheet whose mission statement explicitly rejects the promotion of “opinion” and pledges never to engage in “incitement or argument.” How does this outlet handle the news that a Clinton-appointed U.S. district judge yesterday temporarily blocked the application of Florida laws restricting “gender-affirming care” for minors?

The Florida lawsuit is one of many filed in various states that have adopted bans on health care for trans minors. Gender-affirming care is supported by major medical organizations, and has been deemed as medically necessary and potentially lifesaving for trans youth by the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Okay. What about NBC News — specifically, MSNBC’s flagship morning show Morning Joe, which in my personal experience on the network genuinely strives to provide equal access to viewpoints in opposition to progressive orthodoxy? Are they, too, broadcasting chic pablum that fetishizes false equivalences for the sake of mere appearances? Let’s check in on today’s broadcast:

Hmm. Well, what about the outlets Bacon calls out for their institutional commitment to blinkered, milquetoast centrism: the New York Times and the Washington Post.

The Times recently updated a widget that tracks state-level laws “restricting gender-affirming medical care for minors,” a divisive issue it summarizes thusly:

There is continuing research on how gender-affirming care should be given and when, but the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association support allowing adolescents to access this care. Advocates and physicians who provide the care say the bills infringe on the rights of adolescents and parents, legislate decisions that should be left to doctors and families, and will have mental health ramifications for trans teens. Advocates for trans care have sued in numerous states over these laws, and other Democratic-led states have passed laws protecting transition care for young people.

By contrast, the opposition is granted a single sentence: “Legislators who support the restrictions have said they are seeking to protect children from irreversible decisions.” Truly a grotesque display of “bothsidesism.”

How about the Post? Its coverage of a restriction on “gender-affirming care for minors” in Texas included by now routine appeals to the authority of U.S. medical boards who reject emerging best practices in Europe for treating children struggling with gender dysphoria, which increasingly emphasize psychological care. But the Post also devoted detailed coverage to the plight of families who style themselves “political refugees” as they pursue hormonal treatments for their children out of state.

Fine. What about CNN – a venue allegedly so committed to catering to the sensibilities of the vast, squishy middle that it sacrificed its remit as a news outlet? How did this network navigate this thorny issue and the legislative backlash against irreversible medical interventions for children:

Gender-affirming care spans a range of evidence-based treatments and approaches that benefit transgender and nonbinary people. The types of care vary by the age and goals of the recipient, and are considered the standard of care by many mainstream medical associations.

Though the care is highly individualized, some children and parents may decide to use reversible puberty suppression therapy. This part of the process may also include hormone therapy that can lead to gender-affirming physical change. The surgical procedures that the bill seeks to limit, however, are not typically done on children and many health care providers do not offer them to minors.

Ah. So, not only are these procedures safe, effective, and necessary, they’re not even happening.

If all this is what passes for “skepticism of progressive causes and ideas,” we can at least see why the occasional executive emerges from obscurity now and then to rein in the herd instincts that dominate the media monolith. Or, rather, you could if you weren’t reflexively hostile to even the rote and perfunctory inclusion of a sentence or two explicating conservative objections to this practice, if only to bury them under great heaps of sanctimony and fallacious argumentation.

Media’s commitment to “anti-woke centrism” doesn’t seem to have cost any of the reporters, producers, or executives who produce this content their jobs. Licht will have to think long and hard about that as he descends to earth dangling from a golden parachute.