CBS News’ Will Rahn has an opinion piece today in which he attacks the smugness of many in his own profession in blunt terms. He opens with an admission:
The mood in the Washington press corps is bleak, and deservedly so.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that, with a few exceptions, we were all tacitly or explicitly #WithHer, which has led to a certain anguish in the face of Donald Trump’s victory. More than that and more importantly, we also missed the story, after having spent months mocking the people who had a better sense of what was going on.
This is all symptomatic of modern journalism’s great moral and intellectual failing: its unbearable smugness. Had Hillary Clinton won, there’s be a winking “we did it” feeling in the press, a sense that we were brave and called Trump a liar and saved the republic.
Eventually Rahn turns to the constant accusations of racism against anyone who dares to disagree:
We diagnose them as racists in the way Dark Age clerics confused medical problems with demonic possession….
You’d think that Trump’s victory – the one we all discounted too far in advance – would lead to a certain newfound humility in the political press. But of course that’s not how it works.
Rahn also takes a shot specifically at “explainers and data journalists” who frequently “get things hilariously wrong.” Pretty sure he’s talking about Vox here, a site which is fully invested in the Trump-won-because-of-racism explanation for his victory Tuesday.
The same media that was insisting the right accept the results of the election, without hesitation, just a week ago is now trying to justify the protests which are already veering into vandalism in response to Trump’s win. Humility and a simple admission the media missed the mark doesn’t seem to be in the cards for many.
Rahn concludes his piece saying, “There’s a fleeting fun to gang-ups and groupthink. But it’s not worth what we are losing in the process.” That message is not getting through at the moment.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member