Journalism is reverting to a pre-kindergarten state in the face of Trumpism, but we can still get the word out.
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This week's episode considers how coverage of Trump's second administration by journalists and public intellectuals is failing Americans on an institutional level. Andrea Pitzer walks through recent coverage that refuses to analyze the framework offered by the president for sending the National Guard to DC. Flashing back to her years teaching martial arts and self defense, she explains how she coached pre-kindergartners to "spot the con" in dangerous situations, even though their minds weren't yet developed enough to be able to rely on abstract thinking to connect the dots on a higher level. She laments how some veteran journalists appear to be afflicted with the same limitations today.
Sharing historical examples of betrayals by journalists who refused to see what was happening right before their eyes, she describes Soviet writer Maxim Gorky's betrayal of concentration camp detainees held at the Solovetsky Islands in 1929, and the passive collaboration of Walter Lippmann and other journalists with the whitewashing of correspondent George Polk's death in Greece in 1948. Criticizing the response made by Semafor's Ben Smith to a question about whether democracy is currently in danger, Andrea runs through a whole series of examples in which the press seems to be willfully blind to the present threat. The episode closes with a list of news outlets that are meeting the moment and need support, as well as some concrete ways listeners can themselves get the word out to their fellow Americans.