Reflections
Plus all the links
Oh gosh why not…recapping:
Donald Trump decides to renovate the Reflecting Pool on the Mall, which in fact has had various difficulties over the years, but which no one at the time was complaining about.
His plan is to do a quick superficial job so it will look nice for the 4th, rather than to address the underlying problems.
Instead of doing it though normal government processes, he goes with a no-bid contract to a dubious company.
Experts come out of the woodwork to predict it’s not going to go well.
The story draws considerable press attention.
GOP-aligned media starts complaining that the attention from the neutral media is proof they’re out to get Trump.
Trump starts publicly obsessing about it, undercutting the notion that it’s not a big story.
Trump invents an implausible conspiracy theory about why things went wrong.
The story gets even more mainstream media coverage.
I think that covers it.
So what do we have here? Why neutral expertise is actually useful to presidents. How Trump undermines his own best interests, whether it’s by thinking he knows better than everyone else or by mouthing off when it’s counterproductive. What happens when presidents choose to focus on their own personal priorities rather than the business of the nation.
What might be worth pointing out on top of that is that this was certainly a case of real media bias…but not partisan bias.
This story runs into a bunch of stuff that make it likely the media would fall in love with it. Start with the location. Stories in Washington DC are of course really easy to cover because there are tons of reporters and cameras right there. Then this one is of extra interest to those reporters (and their editors and producers) because it’s personally relevant to them and their friends, but it’s still a national story and therefore legitimately part of the national news. What’s more, it comes on the heels of other local/national stories – Kennedy Center, the Trump Arch, the various White House physical plant episodes, and more – some of which locals in the District really care about, and all of which have primed the media for this one.
It is, of course, a great visual story: The water color! It’s an unambiguous (and, again, visible) fiasco. It helps that there’s no “other side” to it – this isn’t one where Republicans say that things are great and Democrats say they are terrible. It’s very obvious to everyone that the water is the wrong color and the new paint is flaking off. It helps that there’s nothing particularly complicated about it, as is the case when assessing, say, the effects of a tax cut or a change in Medicaid procedures.
It also helps that the stakes are low, so the perceived cost to the “neutral” media’s reputation for, well, neutrality is less likely to be at stake.
The neutral press is a lot less central to how people get news than it used to be. But it’s still a big deal; what those outlets cover doesn’t dictate what’s on social media, for example, but it does heavily influence it. So it’s still important to know that the “neutral” media has never been fully without bias. It’s just partisan bias that the New York Times (in the news pages), the Washington Post, the AP, ABC and CNN try very hard to banish from their coverage. Which, of course, is its own type of bias. Along with all sorts of other factors that influence which stories get covered and how they are covered.
None of this is necessarily bad. It’s absolutely impossible to be fully unbiased, after all. It’s just helpful to understand why some stories blow up and others don’t, and to realize that there are a lot of major factors that have very little to do with the policy or partisan preferences of the people making the news.
On to the links (missed last week, so some of these are a bit older but still well worth it; links might be off schedule sometimes this summer):
1. Seth Masket on his new book on the GOP and the third Trump nomination. (Or just get the book!).
2. Matt Motta and Robert Ralston on prediction markets.
3. Meredith Conroy on the attacks on Talarico’s masculinity.
4. John Sides at Good Authority on young Republicans.
5. Natalie Jackson on partisanship and bad candidates.
6. Scott Lemieux points out that, yes, it’s okay for Democrats to bash Trump for being defeated in Iran.
7. Dan Drezner on JD Vance’s misadventures.
8. Lindsey Cormack on congressional reactions to the Iran deal.
9. Matt Glassman runs through analogies for Congress, the presidency, and the executive branch.
10. The Wesleyan Media Project on Trump and campaign 2026.
11. And back at Good Authority, Nadia Brown on Juneteenth.
Key paragraph and you always have one to help us learn. Thanks!
the “neutral” media has never been fully without bias. It’s just partisan bias that the New York Times (in the news pages), the Washington Post, the AP, ABC and CNN try very hard to banish from their coverage. Which, of course, is its own type of bias. Along with all sorts of other factors that influence which stories get covered and how they are covered.