“At the eleventh hour yesterday, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from freezing federal funding. In the lead up to the planned freeze, the online Medicaid portal was shut down and chaos broke out as federal programs like Meals On Wheels struggled to operate, not knowing exactly what would happen next. As of today, it seems like the entire plan has thankfully been rescinded. But as evil and stupid as our government acted this week, yesterday was an abject failure for America’s corporate media, which is repeating the mistakes it made during the first Trump administration, but in a very different and much more dangerous world. But before we go further here, I want to be clear: I don’t like complaining about “the media,” for the same reason I don’t like blaming everything on “capitalism”. It’s, frankly, not helpful when there are plenty of specific organizations and actors to actually criticize. I’ve also worked in newsrooms most of my adult life. I understand how the sausage is made. Which is why, in 2016, I wasn’t totally surprised by the American media’s very retro approach to covering Trump’s early years in office. It was palace intrigue and tabloid scoops mixed together with business-as-usual White House pool reporting, with the assumption being that this was an aberration. A temporary bout of governmental insanity that would eventually pass. But that was a decade ago, when people still shared links on Facebook, watched cable news, and Google still worked. It was easy for America’s mainstream media to gawk at Trump and let a few of their young internet culture reporters put on tactical armor and traumatize themselves at riots organized by white nationalist militias in the effort of balancing things out. It was easy to believe that The System, the network of institutions and broadcasters America had relied on since the end of World War II, would survive Trump simply because The System, though weakened by the internet, still existed. But, as I said, that was a decade ago. And The System is breaking in front of our very eyes.”
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