What you saw

Watch: Anderson Cooper gaslight his audience. Plus, some funny tweets as a palette cleanser.

It's been a rough couple of weeks for American media. Whether it's the Associated Press using the exonerative voice when reporting a lynching or the New York Times writing a wholly unnecessary fluff piece for a white-collar criminal, progressives (at least on Twitter) are slamming journalists for their clumsy and misleading framing of recent events. The CNN town hall interview with Donald Trump was so poorly received that Anderson Cooper gave a two-minute monologue on his show to mitigate the situation. It was a painful watch. Was this the same goofy New Year's Eve Cooper we all know and love? Because the guy I saw last night felt a little gaslight-y.

You have every right to be outraged today and angry and never watch this network again. But do you think staying in your silo and only listening to people you agree with is going to make that person (Trump) go away? — Anderson Cooper, CNN

Has it always been this bad? I honestly cannot remember. In my early 30s, I would spend my mornings flipping the channel between CNN and MSNBC. I'd then read a piece from the New York Times on my lunch break. Hell, I even had a paid subscription for a time. I was your typical liberal news junky, comfortably part of the coveted 25-34 age demo. During those days, I was most sure about my political leanings. My trust in my favorite news outlets was unshakable. Today, I cringe when I hear James Earl Jones' baritone voice proclaim, "This is CNN. The most trusted name in News."

Even Rachel Maddow, someone I still very much respect, seems to fall flat. In her recent podcast Ultra, she isn't shy calling out white supremacy in our politics, but tends to point to it like a skin rash— something we get every fifty years that’s cured with a dab of historical context. Discussing these issues in systemic terms is not something she or any mainstream journalist seems comfortable doing. I'm starting to understand why.

Don't get me wrong. This isn't some right-wing, vaguely anti-semitic conspiracy theory. I'm not here to proclaim every mainstream outlet as "fake news" and switch on Newsmax. This is a two-things-at-once-can-be-true exploration of our media. The conservative attack on mainstream news makes journalists less safe. At the same time, the media are contextualizing events in a manner that feels dishonest to its viewers. So, I question something I once thought to be a settled belief. Now I wonder what is the role of American media?

CNN, NYT, and MSNBC can't approach the horrors that make the news through a systemic-problem lens, because the solution would then require systemic change. But that's not what these organizations are here to accomplish. Most American media are owned by corporate conglomerates, which answer to shareholders like BlackRock, who care to look no further than the minute-by-minute ratings. Real change is disruption, and disruption is bad business. So, our most trusted journalists try to convince us that the existing order is worth preserving, at least until the following quarterly earnings report. Because no one involved, from the anchor behind the desk to the upper-middle-class viewer, actually wants change. They pine for the days when the average working American was content with pushing our problems behind a veil that is the manifest destiny narrative.

It was a neat magic trick that worked for a time. Corporate media sold us a brand of liberalism that aimed to maintain the status quo. We accepted their narratives so long as it *felt* progressive. They got to keep the money spigot flowing, and we got to claim progressive ideals without ever having to confront the systems that benefited us. But, whether it has always been this bad or it’s getting progressively worse, viewers are starting to become disenchanted.

Anderson Cooper Gaslights His Audience

Funny Tweets