Eric Boehlert: Chasing clicks -- the media's Trump slump and shoddy journalism

[babylonsister]

https://pressrun.media/p/chasing-clicks-the-medias-trump-slump

Chasing clicks — the media’s Trump slump and shoddy journalism
Bored with Biden
Eric Boehlert
3 hr ago

snip//

Here’s the fundamental problem: Following Trump’s chaotic and radical presidency, news consumers have changed their behavior, but the press — addicted to the high of the Trump bump — has been slow to adjust. After Biden’s inauguration, many Americans decided they no longer have to monitor the news throughout the day, every day; they don’t have to doom scroll late at night because there is now an adult in the White House.

That has translated into fewer news clicks and viewers. And that’s a good thing. Large chunks of the population should not live in fear of what their out-of-control president will do, and forced to tune into the news out of a sense of daily panic.

The glitch has been that the press doesn’t want to go back to ‘normal’ because the press became addicted to that incessant sense of Trump theater. (Not to mention the lucrative book deals.) Rather than viewing the Trump bump as an anomaly that does not need to be repeated, the press longs for that era’s constant drama.

That’s been the hurdle — Biden is the anti-Trump. He’s a polite, professional, and effective politician. He doesn’t surround himself with sycophants, he doesn’t fire staff at a record pace, he doesn’t get impeached, and there aren’t nonstop leaks about the daily chaos unfolding inside the West Wing. The Beltway press though, suddenly has little patience for a “boring” president.

snip//

Last week, when a CNN.com poll showed Biden with a solid 49 percent approval rating (essentially unchanged since the summer), the network made sure to bury that fact in the seventh paragraph, while stressing all the bad news in the poll about inflation. Days later, Fox News did CNN one better. When Biden’s approval climbed four points in the network’s poll, Fox News made no mention of it until the 13th paragraph in its online write-up.

This doesn’t happen by accident. If Biden had done poorly in both those polls, that fact would have been prominently placed in the headline and in the very first paragraph. This happens when the press becomes wed to a story — a story they think will generate clicks and draw eyeballs.

[mcar]

1. Boehlert is a must read

[benfranklin1776]

3. Totally agree.

He explains succinctly and accurately the myriad ways the corporate, profit driven media is subverting our democracy for craven financial gain by minimizing and even excusing the sedition of the Republican Party while simultaneously attempting to bury President Biden and the Democratic Party by minimizing or ignoring the very real progress they have made in undoing the F-5 level of damage to We The People and our democracy inflicted by Mango Mussolini and his gang of thugs.

[gab13by13]

2. The post is accurate but,

it isn't shoddy journalism. The MSM is owned and managed by the right. This is why I only watch Nicolle, Chris, and Rachel. I listen to others on Sirius radio. MSNBC is called the liberal cable news network, with that said, the 2 major share holders of Comcast are Vanguard and BlackRock.

[spanone]

4. ...K&R...

[peggysue2]

5. x1000!

Yes, few people realize that President Biden's numbers have been ticking up. Reuters/Ipsos polling indicated the same increase, yet the press has failed to note the change. Why? Because it's so much more fun to report on chaos, chaos, chaos.

I agree with Boehlert regarding the media's addiction to disarray and rumors and leaks and preposterous WH behavior. The stories wrote themselves requiring little in the way of actual work/research.

And it was such great fun!

Except for the fact that as journalists romped, the country (of which they're a part) was being torn apart by the incessant cray-cray and incompetence.

A free press is integral to a free society. But when that same free press goes on a 5-year bender?

This is what we get.