Semafor Delivers Master Class on How Not to Restore Trust in Media

Semafor apparently invited a number of Trump lackeys to a forum about rebuilding trust in journalism.

Trust in the media is in the toilet and has been for quite a while now. There’s plenty of reasons for this. Whether it is through uninformed “both sides are bad” coverage, the relentless sanewashing of Trump, the backlash they received over biased AOC coverage, the multi-year disinformation campaign to push the Online News Act that surprisingly continues to this day, demonizing the culture of whole generations of people younger than baby boomers, or a host of other reasons, very few people have any trust in the media.

Now, the mainstream media is well aware of this. It’s not like people’s lack of trust in the media is some big secret or anything. They know about the data and the anger they frequently draw over piss poor coverage. So, there have been a few efforts over the years to try and turn things around. This includes advertising campaigns that really amount to telling the audience to “just trust us, bro”, insulting the intelligence of the audience by pretending that people don’t know what a journalist is and rewording the code of ethics, or even going to the extreme of saying that the real problem here is the fact that Western countries have the concept of free speech and openly arguing that we should do away with free speech.

At the risk of insulting your intelligence ourselves, these efforts very obviously fell flat. A big part of the reason is that these efforts pretty much proves that mainstream media is in a severe case of denial that they did anything wrong here. Intentionally sucking up to a dictator and knowingly publishing disinformation campaigns in a cynical plot to pad their profits, in their eyes, is by no means problematic in their view. Instead, they blame pretty much everyone and everything else for their misery while refusing to admit that they are part of the problem. Whether that is blaming social media or arguing that the audience just doesn’t know what’s good for them, refusing to even acknowledge anything remotely close to the core of the problem is how mainstream media continues to get stuck with trust problems.

Now, for people such as myself, a big part of the solution to all of this is for mainstream media to go back to what they should be doing: actual journalism that serves the audiences interests and holding power to account. Basically, what Freezenet has done all along. That would go a long way in helping the interests of mainstream media, but until the mainstream media actually acknowledges that this is what they should be doing, it’s hard to see them actually returning to what they advertise themselves as actually doing.

Recently, the mainstream media apparently stepped on yet another rake in their quest to restore trust. Semafor is apparently hosting a “Restoring Trust In Media” event. On the surface, this doesn’t sound so bad, but when you actually see who was invited to this event, you can see just how stupid this move is. From TechDirt:

You might recall that when political news website Semafor entered the media industry on the back of $25 million in private money, they made all kinds of promises about how they were somehow going to revolutionize U.S. media. In reality most of their promises were relatively inane, and it didn’t take long before the outlet demonstrated it was primarily interested in propping up the status quo.

Case in point: one of the very first things the outlet did is start hosting “Restoring Trust In Media” annual conferences. Except each year they make it a priority to unironically validate, normalize and platform a lot of the people actively working to undermine trust in news. Like former Fox News propagandist Tucker Carlson the first year, and overt bigot Megyn Kelly last year.

Semafor keeps being criticized for not only not helping to “restore trust in media,” but for actively making the problem worse. But they keep doubling down. This year’s event, for example, is a who’s who of people that have made U.S. media immeasurably less trustworthy over the last year

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So you’ve got FCC boss Brendan Carr, an authoritarian zealot who has been wiping his ass with the First Amendment. You’ve got Mathias Dopfner, the owner of Politico whose feckless “both sides” reporting and apparent admiration of Trump has helped normalize authoritarianism. You’ve got Matt Murray, the Washington Post Editor who is helping Jeff Bezos throw the paper’s reputation in the toilet in service to Trumpism and corporate power.

You’ve also got Hamish McKenzie, the Substack co-founder who has openly coddled white supremacists and fascists for engagement cash. A few folks from Fox News, arguably the biggest and most successful right wing propaganda operation ever created. And then some representatives for Meet The Press, another stellar example of generally feckless establishment “both sides” or “view from nowhere” access journalism.

When Semafor co-founder and editor-in-chief Ben Smith has been criticized for this in the past he’s pretty consistently been strangely obtuse, insisting these are important people who need interviewing.

But none of the attendees are ever meaningfully pressed. Tucker Carlson wasn’t pressed at all at his role as propagandist. Megyn Kelly isn’t pressed for her grotesque levels of racism and race-baiting engagement clowning. Key figures at Washington Post or Politico aren’t asked serious questions about their role in normalizing authoritarianism.

In a normal world, this would be cast off as an absurd joke, but in the timeline we live in now, this is apparently considered by some as a fantastic idea. The problem is that mainstream media is cozying up to an authoritarian figure and constantly sane washing the fascist president. The solution? Host a whole freaking event where the media visibly does what it can to cozy up to members of the authoritarian regime. Is this supposed to be satire?

I know there are people out there who think I am hard on the mainstream media, but when they pull crap like this, what the heck do you want from me? Have these media types thought that maybe they should stop stepping on rakes all the time?

At any rate, it isn’t a mystery as to why so few people trust the mainstream media these days. Stunts like this seriously isn’t helping their cause here.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.