A Corporate Media System Bound to Capitalism Delivers for Trump for a Second Time

Once again, the 2024 election provided us an opportunity to test whether the U.S. media system can withstand the pressures of an authoritarian threat. And once again, we observed a media system that far too often privileged profit over democratic concerns. This capitulation was, in some ways, more subtle than what we witnessed before, especially in 2016, when coverage of Trump’s campaign was marked by overt sensationalism. Yet, media’s role during the 2024 election season was no less troubling for what it bodes for U.S. democracy’s future.

Media malpractice

Media outlets should have been well prepared this time. Everyone knew exactly what to expect. There were no ambivalences or ambiguities about Trump’s incessant lying or his rabidly xenophobic, transphobic, racist, and misogynistic rhetoric. And yet, despite it all, our media institutions didn’t rise to the occasion to challenge the obvious dangers that Trump posed to democracy. While billionaire owners blocked endorsements of Kamala Harris or outright weaponized their media properties, as in the case of Elon Musk and X, much media coverage was, once again, complicit in normalizing Trump.

From “sanewashing” (sanitizing Trump’s outlandish rhetoric and behavior) to false equivalence, from trivializing policy implications to horse race coverage and the fetishizing of polls, we saw it all over again. The inveterate media critic Jay Rosen had long pleaded with journalists to emphasize “not the odds, but the stakes.” But too often, milquetoast media coverage reverted to a kind of he said/she said anodyne “bothsidesing” narration that left audiences insufficiently alarmed at what policies Trump was proposing.

To be sure, it’s tempting to conclude that, in an era of social media influencers and innumerable podcasters, legacy media no longer matter. In this light, blaming news media institutions seems as pointless as it is inaccurate. After all, few Trump voters are turning to the New York Times for guidance on how to vote. But our elite and incumbent media still play an outsized role in setting discursive parameters and establishing official narratives. The border crisis, run-amok urban crime, the tanking economy—all these crises, to varying degrees, were manufactured and amplified through media.

Such recurring narrative patterns bring into focus more subtle and less measurable—though potentially more profound—media effects worthy of further consideration. In addition to the general problem of pervasive, low-quality information, a long-term problem is the ideological policing and hegemonic narratives that accrete over time. I flag these issues for future areas of concern that deserve more attention from media scholars, who tend to focus on short-term effects.

Uncovering structural roots

If we were to pan out for a moment and consider the big picture, we might be more likely to see how the predictable patterns of selection, omission, and emphasis in media coverage suggest a common structural underpinning—that many problems in standard election reporting stem from deeper pathologies, especially those connected to commercial logics.

Extreme commercialism afflicts most aspects of the U.S. media system. Pegging news media so directly to market relationships has led to systemic failures: Racial and class-based redlining, market censorship, ever-expanding news deserts, and degraded information. It also creates the conditions for monopolistic control over entire sectors of our communication and information infrastructures that allow oligarchs to capture them.

Indeed, “media oligarchy” is an apt phrase for describing our current state of affairs: From the right-wing tech titans such as Elon Musk and his ilk, to opportunistic monopolists like Jeff Bezos, to the villainous media baron Rupert Murdoch and his progeny. These unaccountable billionaires own and control vast swathes of U.S. information and communication infrastructure—a dangerous predicament according to the most elementary democratic theory.

The challenge ahead

Ultimately, these moments of crisis can be clarifying. They cast into stark relief the power structures that shape our media. They illuminate just how ill-equipped our media institutions are to perform the basic tasks of democracy. And they point to pressure points that we can exploit to create a better system, one that actually serves our information and communication needs.

The fact that Trump prevailed is a damning statement on the health of our media systems. These institutions have all failed us. This means that we must radically reform them, especially our media, at a systemic level from the ground up. But to do so requires a structural critique of commercial media—one that treats capitalism as an independent variable—and the anti-democratic institutions that sustain these systems.

Most media scholarship, especially in the U.S., takes the commercial system for granted, treating capitalism as the natural steward of journalism. While journalism scholars are quick to indict the practices and routines of individual news organizations and journalists, better norms will not save us. We need a structural overhaul of our media institutions. This requires renewed emphasis on political economy and policy as well as ideology and discourse. We have much work ahead of us.

This was first published at Election Analysis-US and appears here at Common Dreams with permission.