Politics

Don't use a question hed when you're going to fucking answer it in the body. I get this was an inexperienced subed who likely wrote this, but I let an editor write a hed on my column all of once. After that disaster, you take over these things.

In my American Crisis newsletter two days after the 5 April protests, I offered a few theories for why the media may seem so blasé.

First, I posited, much of the mainstream media tend to view this much as Fox News does. The protesters are just the usual suspects – “liberals” – doing the predictable thing.

Second, many large media companies are afraid that prominent protest coverage will be criticized by the political right as partisan, and they can’t bear that label.

Third, corporate media decision-makers, always focused the bottom line, are fearful of losing right-leaning readers and viewers; yes, we’ll cover this, they seem to say, but quietly, since we don’t want to antagonize anyone. In an era in which Trump has attempted to bully the press into submission, through denying access and through lawsuits, cowardice and capitulation are all too common.