Mar.05

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Dem 47

   

GOP 53

The Media Landscape on the Left Is Fragmenting

Liberal media used to be concentrated in a few outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and MSNBC. Some of these outlets are not so liberal anymore and some others are teetering. What is replacing them is a smorgasbord of micro-media outlets, some of which are one-trick ponies. In fact, it is sometimes hard to tell who is on which team now. For example, The Bulwark was founded by Bill Kristol and the neocons from The Weekly Standard, who rooted for and cheered on Dick Cheney and the Iraq war. Now that team hates Donald Trump with the heat of a thousand suns, but is not much interested in other "liberal" issues like abortion. That is not to say they are against them, and as born-again libertarians, are generally with the Democrats on many cultural issues. But the focus is on getting Trump below the Bush line.

Other examples are Pod Save America, The Daily Show, The Breakfast Club, The Ezra Klein Show, The American Prospect, Mother Jones, AlterNet, CounterPunch, Slate, MeidasTouch, and many more. Axios has a quick guide to the modern landscape:

• The Partisans: Shows like the popular MeidasTouch are safe spaces for Democrats to get their message out to Democratic voters with little or no pushback. Many of these are even friendlier than MS NOW
  
  
• The Resistance: These are stridently anti-Trump rather than being pro-Democrat. If an interviewee seems squishy about his or her hatred and opposition to Trump, the interview will get some negative feedback from the host. Interviews aren't always friendly to all Democrats. The I've Had it podcast and Heather Cox Richardson's substack are in this bag.
  
  
• The Elites: The old-timers are here, among them MS NOW, The Atlantic, The New Yorker and, of course, the Times opinion page. Donors, powerbrokers, and thought leaders pay attention and want to be here.
  
  
• The Center Left: Here are pro-Democratic voices that do not want to be associated with the Jasmine Crocketts of the world. Leftish, but not too far left. Matt Yglesias can be found here.
  
  
• The Left Wing: This has changed since 2020, when voices friendly to Bernie Sanders were here. Now it is dominated by pro-Palestine, anti-Israel names, like Medhi Hasan, Ryan Grim and Hasan Piker.

This fragmentation means that candidates who want to reach as many voters as possible may need to be interviewed on 5, 10 or more podcasts and shows to get in front of a large audience.

A serious problem with this new model is that almost none of the new outlets do serious reporting. A few, like Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo, have half a dozen actual reporters who go out and try to get news stories, but most of the rest consist of one (or maybe a handful of) hosts who shoot the bull with candidates and others. It's basically all opinion and no news. A news ecosystem with no actual news isn't actually a news ecosystem. It is more like Fox's prime time lineup. (V)