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Why didn't the mainstream media warn people about Project 2025?

https://prismreports.org/2024/09/15/project-2025-was-in-the-works-for-decades-why-did-the-mainstream-media-fail-to-inform-readers-of-its-threats-to-democracy/

It’s been more than a year since the publication of “Mandate for Leadership,” the 900-page book of policy proposals also known as Project 2025. The book outlines how a future Republican president should navigate an administrative transition. Media has painted the book as a harbinger of what’s to come rather than the culmination of a decades-long plot to undermine democracy.

Why didn't the mainstream media warn people about Project 2025?

39 comments

danekrae

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Do they mean the Project 2025 that I heard about in a main story in a Last Week Tonight episode?

ryven

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The headline is a little misleading. The actual article is talking about why, given that Project 2025 is the culmination of 40 years of far-right thought, the media has only begun sounding the alarm bells since the publication of the book, and why the focus is on the most sensational aspects instead of on explaining the pernicious, foundational, fascist ideas it's built upon.

odelik

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Seriously. I've been hearing early warning alrms about Project 2025 from media articles for at leat 6+ months now. Same with the election poll rigging shit that I've been seeing "MSM isn't telling you about this MAGA poll rigging!"

Maybe it's because I pay attention? Nah, that can't be it, I have ADHD.

In reality, it's because there's a ton of shit going on and in various stages of completion. Shit that's dire/urgent today gets fed to the top of reporting with the stuff that sucks but doesn't have impact now gets depruotized for later.

PersnickityPenguin

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And CNN, and MSNBC, and politico, and CBS news, and BBC, and...

SnotFlickerman

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Warner Bros.-Discovery ain't the mainstream media!!! /s

thallamabond

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1a in June 2024

https://www.npr.org/2024/06/17/1198911377/1a-06-17-2024

Npr August 2023

https://www.npr.org/2023/08/08/1192634090/if-republicans-win-the-white-house-in-2024-climate-policy-will-likely-change

Omegamanthethird

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Generally speaking , I don't think of npr when people complain about mainstream media.

Also, a couple reports aren't enough of a warning for the general population. The media does not do a good job of covering problems with the right-wing.

"The Big Lie" is one of the few examples of them actually taking a right-wing issue seriously. And that's because it was a direct attack on themselves. Otherwise it feels like they sanitize reporting as much as possible to appear unbiased.

SnotFlickerman

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Good point, but it brings up the question of whose responsibility is it to actually disseminate such information after a point?

Is it up to the media to non-stop crow about it so everyone is aware, or are a handful of articles from a source that isn't widely used?

NPR is sadly not even in the top 10 news sources used by Americans. The Daily Mail, a fucking right wing shitrag from the UK is in the top ten.

So, is it up to citizens who have been informed to spread the word, or is it up to the news media to not let up on serious issues and stop sanewashing a specific candidate.

Arguably, CNN has written about Project 2025 a lot, and it's in the top 10, but has also used a lot of passive voice that has allowed Trump to avoid connection with Project 2025.

So, it's not so straightforward. It can easily be argued major news sources are sanewashing Trump, spending time critiquing Harris for small things while not dedicating as much time to serious issues from the Trump campaign.

It can also be easily argued that Project 2025 has been covered a great deal, but that a lot of people still don't know what it is or understand it or its importance to the election.

I think that's the question: What are our actual expectations for our news media? Is writing about it once enough? Is it their responsibility to hammer the issues or is it the responsibility of the citizens?

Sanctus

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I think we need different incentives than profit when it comes to information sharing. Maybe a profit motive isn't the best thing for a "news" source to have. Especially when ratings seem to be tied to ragebait and hate.

SnotFlickerman

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💯

WraithGear

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Journalists and editors need to eat. And the problem is if the government gets involved and funds it, well let’s just say that ends badly. Not even the post office is allowed to run without being fucked with by republicans, and then they are somehow forced to turn a profit, when they are also forced to run in a way that is antithetical to making profit based decisions. And now you have the government deciding for the news, what is biased. And no more reporting on government officials that aren’t just puff pieces.

SnotFlickerman

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It's not impossible, however. While the BBC indeed has a lot of problems on its own, it's actually been relatively well separated from the British government. They've had more issues with covering up for their own celebrities like Jimmy Savile, rather than covering for the government.

But yes, journalists need to eat and they're being paid so little that it results in the kind of media landscape we have now. We no longer have a host of long-form investigative journalists who are given months to research and develop stories. The 24 hour news cycle has reduced everything to minimal impact and journalists having to pump out stories without real depth.

WraithGear

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Ok…. And you assume this will be true… if an American government… who established a Russian asset as president, is attempting to defund private schools so that they can give money to certain religious orgs and push a Christian message, who is trying to privatize the post office, and who refuse to answer to war crimes is a good environment to take control of the news media?

SnotFlickerman

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I didn't argue that at all, but you do you on putting words in my mouth.

WraithGear

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I didn’t attempt to. Just saying. You said it wasn’t impossible for government owed news media to dutifully report against the government. Maybe not, but our country’s kinda stacked the deck against that

Sanctus

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Yeah the issue is the profit motive encompasses all industries and forces them to a race to the bottom. Innovation is eaten alive for profits, nothing goes back into the company, and the shareholders reign supreme. This is simply an example of what capitalism does to journalism, nothing more.

WraithGear

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I’m not sure why we need share holders at all. Not sure what function they serve. A business can remain active without the stock market if they produce value. They could innovate and not necessarily be wholly motivated by profit above all else.

Sanctus

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They used to

thallamabond

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I just get kind of triggered whenever any media in today's fractured media landscape uses "Main Stream Media" especially in a headline as loaded as this.

SnotFlickerman

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I think people forget that Alex Jones was one of the original people pushing the phrase "mainstream media" back in the Bush years...

...back then nobody thought anything of it because we had evidence that the NYT was sitting on damaging stories for the Bush admin (like the warrantless NSA spying) for years to protect them.

But the attitude and name for it was a bad way to present it then, and it's a bad way to present it now, because it amounts to: You know that those big media companies that are mostly trustworthy lie to you sometimes or speak on issues in a way that aren't entirely truthful, but you know what's better these no-name media groups that are funded by foreign governments that are definitely lying to you!

thallamabond

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Another great example was CNN and their relationship with weapons manufacturers in the 90s.

SnotFlickerman

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CNN has a weird history, because there's been a lot of conspiracies that have been debunked from that period, too.

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/22170/did-cnn-fake-footage-during-the-gulf-war-purporting-a-live-gas-attack

They were accused of faking a live shot during the Gulf War because of a weird background that seems like it actually is an exterior shot of a building there. I specifically remember Alex Jones claiming 20 years ago it was proof CNN was liars. A lot more evidence that he was the liar.

But, unlike me (and those in that thread), a lot of people never were willing to keep looking and find more evidence one way or the other and not take the rantings of someone like Alex Jones as gospel.

(If it isn't clear, in the early 2000's I had a coworker/neighbor who was leftist who was into Jones because Jones was against Bush at the time, which he erroneously thought that meant that Jones must be right about something because Bush was so duplicitous. I think he was also smart enough to move on from that, thankfully, of course. Too many aren't.)

thallamabond

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I know this response is way too late, but I remembered the term that mattered. CNN effect. If you look it up you'll see a lot of old articles about what a 24-hour News Network did to basically change the way people absorbed information and how that changed perceptions.