So … let’s talk about the way traditional media has been covering Trump in his second term.
There have been softball questions in the White House press briefings, news outlets like the Washington Post killing columns that are critical of Trump, and headlines that downplay the authoritarian threat we face with tanks rolling in the street to put down standard protests in L.A.
Lincoln Square Editor Susan J. Demas and Tara McGowan, founder of COURIER Newsroom and Good Information Inc., have both worked in corporate media in the past and seen its problems up close. But in this new autocratic era, those outlets are failing us in new and dangerous ways.
“This is deeply, deeply dark and scary,” says Tara. “Because what we know on the surface is that legacy media brands and corporate-owned media … a lot of the news networks — CBS, ABC, NBC — they have all bent the knee to the lawsuits and the attacks from the administration.”
But the same time, there has been a boom in new media, from COURIER to independent media like Lincoln Square on Substack and other platforms. There are more outlets that dedicated to telling the truth during this time of rising authoritarianism.
“There need to be entities that exist solely for the purpose of accountability of this administration and localizing that reporting like COURIER, like Lincoln Square, like Midas [Touch], and Now This,” Tara says. “There's a lot more mission-aligned organizations now. They need to be resourced and protected because we will never, ever, ever, ever bow to this administration. But that means that we need to have a lot more flexibility and resources and, frankly, legal services to be able to keep doing that work because we know how ruthless and how vindictive this administration is and how aggressive they're being.”
Tara and Susan also discuss the need for more local news reporting and reaching people where they are on social media platforms.
Thank you Michael S. Lipkin, Emilie Kovach, Lisa 🇺🇦🌿🔍🔎🌈, Lois Villa, Jackie Taylor Miller, and many others for tuning into our live video with Tara McGowan!
