Josh Marshall on how the "liberal media" works against Dems
Josh Marshall on how the "liberal media" works against Dems
"Republicans in the national political conversation have trained the press to think, 'We play hard. We break the rules sometimes.'"
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How is it possible that the elite press, comprised largely of highly educated reporters and editors from blue parts of the country, regularly winds up putting its thumb on the scale for MAGA?
Josh Marshall, founder and Editor in Chief of Talking Points Memo, has an explanation.
“The press expects much more from Democrats,” he told us. “I think, in a lot of ways, that’s because most people in the elite media are more culturally and socially adjacent to the Democrats. That leads to some of the imbalance in coverage, which is kind of paradoxical, but there are different standards. Journalists also know that Democrats will react to criticisms.”
Marshall, for my money, is one of the world’s top chroniclers of Trumpism and the media environment that enables it. He spends a lot of time these days both in TPM and on social media calling out shoddy coverage in a way that only someone who doesn’t work for a legacy outlet can do.
So with the final two month sprint to November 5 right in front of us, we figured now is a good time to connect with Marshall to discuss the state of political media and a flailing Trump campaign that so far has been unable to develop effective lines of attack on Kamala Harris.
“If there’s one thing you can usually rely on Republicans for, it’s to be very good at coming up with political attacks against women and people who aren’t white,” he said. “That’s sort of their sweet spot. I still haven’t completely gotten my head around the scope of their failure here.”
A full transcript of Marshall’s conversation with Public Notice contributor Thor Benson, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows.
Thor Benson