Once upon a time in America, the twice-impeached criminal vulgarian known as Donald Trump narrowly beat President Joe Biden in the 2024 election.
Both candidates were extensively reported to be equally flawed. Learning nothing from previous presidential elections, the mainstream press continued to employ a “both sides” approach in its reporting to avoid any presumption of bias.
President Biden was old. Meanwhile, Trump faced eighty-eight criminal charges, incited a violent insurrection, and was held liable for sexual assault and defamation.
The summer of 2024 was a doozy. When he wasn’t uttering incoherent gibberish at his rallies, Trump spent his time sleeping and farting through his criminal hush money trial in New York. In an interview with Time magazine, he said he was open to having states monitor women’s pregnancies. Over at the U.S. Supreme Court, Trump’s lawyer made a full-throated call for authoritarianism, arguing that Presidents—well, Republican Presidents, at least—could be immune from prosecution when they assassinate political rivals or stage a coup.
Even though each of these news items was a five-alarm fire, many in the corporate press thought nonviolent college students protesting Israel’s war on Gaza were the biggest threat to America.
Moreover, the press didn’t think stories about the economy got as much traffic as crime, which actually decreased during the Biden Administration. As such, many American voters believed the 2024 economy was worse than the halcyon days of 2020, when we shut down due to an unprecedented pandemic that killed more than a million people.
Regardless, too many reporters chose performative neutrality over airing the truth, hedging their bets and waiting for the election outcome in hopes of gaining scoops and access from both parties. They also foolishly believed that platforming MAGA extremists would mollify the anger of the right wing that still viewed them as “the enemy of the people.”
Even the milquetoast centrism of National Public Radio wasn’t spared! In April, Uri Berliner, then an NPR editor, published a factually incorrect piece accusing the soothing voices of his mostly white, liberal colleagues of being megaphones of “wokeness.” This was the same NPR who allegedly told its staff to “both sides” the 2020 election, matching any coverage of Trump’s numerous lies with a story about Hillary Clinton’s lies. When a staffer asked how they should report when one candidate lied more than the other, they were met with silence.
Meanwhile, “both sides” was in short supply when it came to hearing from actual progressives advocating for universal health care and freedom for Palestinians. More conservatives began populating the pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic. Substack became the home for Nazis and “contrarians” who were rightwing adjacent. HBO host Bill Maher went from liberal to an angry, old racist who yells at clouds, often platforming other angry people who shared his fear of the woke. He was rewarded with a contract extension.
MAGA cheerleaders filled the seats of cable news and talk shows. For a hot second, the allegedly “liberal” NBC News hired Ronna Romney McDaniel, the former head of the Republican National Committee, as a political analyst, even though she previously mocked the network and helped Trump’s failed insurrection. The same network that told progressive BIPOC talent that it had no money to hire contributors somehow magically found $300,000 a year for McDaniel. In a rare move, some influential hosts reflected the anger of the majority and publicly criticized the hiring, resulting in her quick dismissal.
The year 2024 was bleak for the Fourth Estate. Media outlets were dismantled, journalists were losing jobs, and local news was disappearing, thanks in part to the greed, incompetence, and terrible management of a few wealthy people who were able to fail upward and receive GOP tax cuts. The New York Times, however, remained in business even as its editor Joe Kahn continued defending his paper’s alleged neutrality in the face of impending threats to our democracy.
Upon reflection, it wasn’t that shocking that Trump won the election.
Within a week of gaining power, President Trump radically reshaped the federal government and implemented the extreme MAGA policies outlined in Project 2025, a conservative playbook created by the Heritage Foundation for a second Trump Administration.
Not to be outdone, Homeland Security Secretary Stephen Miller vowed to help fulfill Trump’s promise to be a “dictator for one day” and seek revenge against his real and imaginary enemies. He hastily assembled an internment camp, where members of the alleged “deep state” were rounded up and detained, thanks to the help of his newly purged Department of Justice. Their leader, Attorney General Bill Barr, who had been rehabilitated by the corporate press during a book tour, supported his former boss in the election and giddily rejoined the MAGA train.
The “vermin,” “thugs,” and “invaders”—which include, but are not limited to, immigrants, Democrats, Muslims, Black people, Mike Pence, and a windmill—huddled for warmth every day under a rusty steel awning, taking a quick break from their constant plotting of a great escape while avoiding the vigilant eyes of armed, jackbooted MAGA apparatchiks led by General Nick Fuentes.
However, some fellow detainees refused to join. With their recorders held through the holes in the chain-link fence, several reporters kept cozying up to the guards, begging for access, and asking for a juicy quote. Even as they lost their freedoms, they were willing to die for an exclusive: chickens for Colonel Sanders.
Thankfully, this is just dystopian fiction. There’s still time to correct course and reject the harmful “both sides” coverage of the 2016 and 2020 elections.
When influential reporters and hosts speak up, as they did following the hiring of Ronna McDaniel, their bosses buckle. We need more of them to pick the side of truth over neutrality so that the voice of the majority can be heard, a privilege and freedom that some of us wouldn’t have in a second administration of Donald Trump.