If you’ve read the title, you know what this is about.
And no, this is not a self-congratulatory piece of gloating. Journalists may run the world, but I certainly do not. To refine the thesis a bit, we might say that “journalists at prestigious and influential outlets run the world.” As much as I love The Pacer, I must say it doesn’t exactly meet the criteria of “prestigious and influential.” After all, they employ me.
When I say “journalists run the world,” I mean that journalists have power, and more importantly they have the kind of self-contained, self-derived power that we associate with rulership. This has not always been the case throughout all of time and history, after all you wouldn’t mistake the editor of Pravda for the Premier of the Soviet Union, but in 21st century America, Pravda doesn’t propagandize for the state, the state puts on a good face for Pravda.
Think of it like this. There is one monolithic institution in America that can make or break basically any politician: elite journalism. Organizations with prestige like The New York Times, The Washington Post, etcetera, can torpedo a president, either would-be or sitting, with muckraking stories or preserve their preferred candidate from electoral loss or political consequences by simply not reporting on shady misdeeds (which, let’s be honest, virtually anyone running for office has committed). Functionally, American politics has a handful of “viewpoints” that are offered to media consumers, and everyone bases their opinions on what they hear in the news. Everyone, so don’t feel like a rube. It’s not mysterious. Since the members of the press allow us to have an idea of what is going on out there in that mass of 330 million people we share a country with, they get to construct what you see, and they set the scenes in whichever way they prefer.
Donald Trump and Joe Biden perfectly illustrate this binary. Donald Trump won the presidency largely because enough people wanted to give the finger to journalists that they achieved critical mass. His administration was scandal-ridden and leaked like a sieve compared to the press-darling Obama Administration which was “historically free of scandal.” As a result of a hostile press (combined with a liberal helping of incompetence) Trump accomplished next to nothing in his term. Now compare the incoming Biden Administration which has literally had scandal fodder suppressed by the media during an election year. For context, I have no idea whether or not the Hunter Biden scandal is anything other than a flash in the pan, but I’m sure it’s no more speculative than claiming Trump was a Manchurian candidate for two to three years.
There is a reason why political campaigns have to be concerned with optics, but journalists never seriously worry about a crackdown from the state. The tail isn’t wagging the dog, the truth is just that, insofar as they are able, the media can pick government leaders by focusing a withering beam of outrage on their opponents and showering their allies in praise. It’s called the illusory truth effect: hear something repeated long enough and, all other things being equal, you believe it.
Now this voodoo that journalists have, it works on some people but not others. In order for it to work, you have to have a basic level of trust from the public. Some people will refuse to believe anything printed in the Times because their friend-or-foe system is working correctly and they perceive that their interests are directly threatened by elite journalism. Those people are a minority.
But you, reader, you want democracy to run correctly, don’t you? You don’t want journalists to pick the candidates, you want the people (whatever that means) to pick them. Well, there’s only one problem with that. They already do.
Consider this parable. Let’s say a village wants to elect a mayor. Every citizen has one vote, and they want to make the right one. So they go to the seers at the temple, make their sacrifices, and ask the seers which candidate the gods favor. The seers make their recommendation, and the villagers vote that man into the position. Who elected the mayor?
What I have described is a Schrödinger’s democracy, which is precisely the kind that we have. While the symbol of power, the vote, rests with the villagers, the ability to use that power (i.e. the power itself) resides with the seers. But that is traditionally what is called an oligarchy.
But the parable goes much further. If the mayor is of a mind to listen to the seers (do you think Biden Administration staffers read the New York Times?) then they exercise power in a double-sense. Not only do they pick the mayor, but by their pronouncements, prophecies, and prognostications, they may also direct the mayor to see their perspective on the world, which is almost as good as working them like a marionette doll. Fine bit of work isn’t it?
So if you want democracy, rule by the people, what do you do? In essence, you make people ignorant. At least when it comes to voting. Naturally this would strike some as abhorrent. Democracy needs a well-educated populace and all that jazz. But if you truly want democracy, you don’t want your average voter to read a newspaper, least of all ones published by people who all go to the same schools, live in the same places, and despise half the electorate. No, you want people to be able to have a good enough grasp of the world by their own sense perception that they don’t need an East Coast shaman to tell them how to think about this or that. That means, inevitably, shrinking the purview of democracy so that voting becomes a purely local affair.
It’s either that, I think, or the situation gets worse, and it’s only a matter of time before another John Quincy comes along to keep the journalists in check. So much the worse for the First Amendment.
Image Credit / History.com
