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Pattern Matching
Facebook Is the ‘Mainstream Media’ Now
The election proved that social platforms are the new gatekeepers
For half a decade, debates have simmered as to how the news media should cover Donald Trump’s candidacy and presidency. Recall the Huffington Post consigning his GOP primary campaign to its entertainment section in 2015; the New York Times’ 2017 handwringing as to whether to call his lies “lies;” the AP’s 2019 disavowal of “euphemisms for racism;” and the ongoing questions of whether his speeches and rallies should be covered live.
An implicit assumption in these critiques was that established media juggernauts could impact how the broader electorate understood Donald Trump. If they failed to cover him with sufficient bluntness and urgency, critics warned, his misdeeds would go unchecked and voters would fail to punish him at the polls. While not every warning was heeded, it’s safe to say that by the end of his term, no one who regularly read and believed the New York Times, watched CNN, or listened to NPR could fail to grasp that he was a liar, a bully, and a threat to American democracy, among other seemingly disqualifying traits.
And yet: He received some 7 million more votes in 2020 than he had in 2016. Even as Joe Biden edged past him in critical states by week’s…
