It's not at all boring. There's a lot of very massive policy shifts taking place. The question is, why do partisan media /claim/ it's boring?
Usually when I see that claim being made, it's more an indication that A. The partisan media is loathe to show what's happening, and B. They want to give their readers/viewers a plausible excuse for looking the other way.
Media is based on retaining your attention. If they claim news is slow, there is something they are holding above their well-being. Figure out what it is, and start looking harder there.
It's more boring that it used to be -- I used to read the news every morning to see what stupid thing the president tweeted.
Now that the current administration makes more planned policy decisions and announces them through normal media channels, the news is more boring. But I like boring when it comes to government policy decisions. I definitely read the news less often with this administration since there are rarely any surprising announcements and even when there are, I know that they've been vetted with others in the administration and aren't a snap decision based on his mood.
Being boring doesn't mean that the news is not important.
In this article they measure "boringness" by the amount of traffic news websites receive. It is a debatable metric but has the merit of being fairly objective.
A conspiracy requires some common reason shared by both parties. I think there's some common-sense split reasons:
1. Left-side, Biden is pretty concerning - there's some serious mental issues showing regularly and undeniably, and while they try to display him as a moderate, his policies are far to the left of even those adopted by Obama. Avoiding coverage of this helps preserve the claim of moderation.
2. Right-side, very few elected officials are being reasonable representatives, and most aim for social media clout over action. Coverage of this would throw a serious wrench in the GOP engine, and lead to greater voter ire. Without Trump to uphold, there's no longer cover for these reps, so avoiding coverage maintains the claim that the representatives are properly representing.
IMHO, Axios is trying to make the impression that nothing interesting is happening right now, that the new administration is too busy with real work to stirr the crowrd, and that all controversy is firmly in past.
Bit that's a lie: axios is not neutral (are there neutral objective news agencies today?) and there's a lot happening right now. Gathered by pieces from various biased sources, at the very least we have 3 big controversies: the Texas border problem (a big problem, actually), the well known ideology is invading military, schools and gov agencies, and the mysterious "test ballots" in the NYC elections that would cast some doubts if the story gets more publicity. So yeah, the party is going on.
The left media never criticizes Biden and the right media never criticizes Trump. Axios is moderately left: they try to not make news out of thin air, but they also omit facts that would upset the left. Edit: I believe that axios would love to report both sides of the events, but they can't afford to offend their sponsors; at most they can change the side.
As that article points out, the site was brand new at the time. Since then it has evened out a lot.
The Media Bias Chart puts it very slightly to the left. You have to take that with a grain of salt, and I'd say that the error bars from the methodology would place it pretty much dead center.
Of course the Media Bias Chart is itself potentially biased, but have a look at it yourself, and I suspect it will at least roughly correspond to your understanding of the left-right spectrum.
If Axios was biased in favor of Trump at the time that article was written, it no longer seems to be true. I think it's a stretch to call it "moderately left", but it's almost certainly not far right.
Yeah I don't think Axios is at all partisan and I am a huge fan of their 'smart brevity.'
I think they might be conflating access to sources (and thus the stories) which was/is a big driver for Axios.
Was founded by the most valuable Politco Playbook reporters who have probably the deepest connections in the swamp. And it's standard practice to leak what's either good for you personally or your boss' agenda.
I take exception to the portrayal of Mother Jones as "far left" or even of the existence of much of a far left in the US. This is a tactic of the overwhelmingly rightist attitude in the US to portray everything as "both sides", trying to find an equivalence between the nationalist and xenophobic fearmongering of Newsmax or Breitbart and the "radical antifa left" of publications like Mother Jones that advocate for workers' rights.
The fear-based rhetoric of Newsmax and Breitbart needs an opposite and equal villain, someone to really point the finger at say, see, it's them, they're the real baddies! But this opposite and equal villain doesn't exist. Workers' rights and unions are pretty basic concepts in most western countries; the US is one of the exceptions where such things are commonly vilified.
Worse, portraying both of these two sides of American politics as opposite and equal leads to more moderate people talking about false middle grounds. Example: "maybe we shouldn't put kids in cages but we don't want wild open borders that allows every Mexican criminal to come in! So, we still should be tough on immigration, but not that tough!" This apparent "middle ground" ends up being just more of the same fear-based rhetoric of xenophobia.
Except...this shows it affecting all media, with the effect increasing with distance outward from what the article labels “left-leaning” (left-leaning has the least negative impact, then mainstream, then a near tie between right-leaning and far-left then far-right.)
How does this get characterized as a blow to partisan media, unless the categories are misleading and the “left-leaning” category is the least partisan?
Is the summary of the effect a lie, or are the category names the lie?
I think the Overton window has been shifted so much in political media that it's disconnected from what "mainstream" is. It seems like the simplest answer given the overwhelming corporate pandering to left leaning causes over the last few years - the corporations have more actionable numbers and are following the money when forced to choose a side. The media is just a decade or two behind on their targeting.
Talk about shifting the Overton window. How left-leaning are those causes really? Accepting gay and trans people for who they are isn't exactly radical Marxist theory.
Just done my benchmark, according to the results, Axios itself is left-leaning based on their own 5-notch wacky scale, also they either don't know the word centrist or [intentionally] misuse mainstream [to include the certain paper].
I heartily welcome the trend, if it is long-term. Politics does not matter so much that it becomes difficult for family members to sit at a table for dinner. This is a problem not only in the US, but all over the world. We need to step back.
World wide, there's an attempted move to limit human rights. Honestly, I'm more encouraged that people are discussing fervently it.
> A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true. - Martin Luther King
I just wish people could break out their "tribal" mentality about it. There's serious issues that need to be addressed.
Yeah what I've learned in this cycle is that irrespective of their views, most Americans are utterly spineless. I would not rely on my fellow citizens to protect or even advocate for me since most seem more interested in not rocking the boat (ie. Upsetting the upper classes).
Sorry but it does matter. Back in Pakistan, I liked center left PTI and my dad liked left wing nationalist MQM. My mom once even voted for JUI but other wise votes center-right. We had no issues at the dinner table and these parties are at differt ends of the political spectrum.
I don't know the figures, but post 2008 elections, (as soon as Obama's inauguration got over) there was an immediate ramp up of tea party politics, which started occupying a lot of the air time on TV etc. I am not sure whether it led to increase in traffic.
There is always a boom and bust surrounding presidential election years and viewership/readership of news in the US. It was probably more dramatic this cycle. I do know viewership / listenership was breaking record at many television and radio news stations and so I suspect the fall in numbers will be equal to the climb.
I would love to see an expanded historical context as well, but having lived through it, it sure feels like the Trump era was an absolute explosion of political media, and the Biden administration has felt like a welcome return to normalcy, in the sense that there’s not a controversy or crisis every day.
I don’t recall anything like the Trump years during the Clinton -> Obama years.
Stop watching Fox. I have seen MSNBC and PBS criticise Biden a lot for mot fulfilling his campaign promises like minimum wage and not sending enough vaccines to other countries and lack of action on climate change. Meanwhile I never saw Fox criticize Trump and when they did do it very mildly, he immediately lashed out and pushed even more extreme OAN.
I don't watch Fox. I don't have cable. I don't watch TV.
Like him or hate him, I always knew what Trump was thinking. He was very open. I wish Biden were as well. When he speaks, Biden can barely get a word out of his extremely scripted speeches. Trump had a unique way of speaking, but he was always pretty clear, save for a few exceptions.
Psaki seems to always obscure any question asked. For example, she has repeatedly blamed the GOP for pushing the defunding of police, which is such an epic amount of gaslighting, I'm surprised she wasn't laughed at.
Moreover, it was pretty clear that during the Trump administration, the media saw its role as one of antagonism to 'get to the truth'. During Biden's administration, they've dropped this pretense completely. Instead, they just repeat the white house's messaging without much critical analysis. This is exactly what they did during Obama. And its exactly what they did during Bush. If you recall correctly, during Bush's term, they repeated his lies so often that they sent us to a useless war in the middle east.
This is why I say that the 'return to normalcy' is opaqueness in governance and a return to the media protecting the ruling class. This isn't about party; it's not even about theory of governance. It's about having a president whose views on issues he doesn't articulate directly to me, and a media establishment that is quite happy to repeat lies from democrats or republicans, as long as they have the right pedigree.
I don't think the Trump administration had actual controversies and crises any more often than past administrations--the presence of Trump in the White House was considered a crisis in and of itself by many, which is probably what made otherwise mundane government drama seem more newsworthy.
Who doesn't want to attack Biden? I would think the same forces that attacked Obama over, say, wearing a tan suit or other polarized nonsense would love to do the same to Biden. Surely they could fabricate them same attacks if they wanted?
There was a huuuuuuge jump in polarization when Obama was elected. Which is exactly what we would expect historically, as that is the usual trend as soon as there is any progress on our anti-black racism. Though there was a brief expansion of democracy in heavily black areas after the civil war, the Reconstruction was fought tooth and nail, leading to the rise of the KKK and incidents like the insurrection in Wilmington NC that overthrew a democratically elected, racially integrated local government. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_insurrection_of_1... After Bush, electing a black man was the basis for a huge rise in white supremacy activity and recruiting, and this was exploited by partisan media in order for partisan media to gain influence and audience.
My education included little history between the civil war in the 1860s and the civil rights movement of the 1960s. But I think that the history of that era is essential for understanding our current politics, as in many ways we are reenacting the same social forces that happened exactly a century ago in reaction to ending slavery.
You should not be proud of that. Part of the whole problem is that we get our lesser of two evils, but then everyone stops paying attention and they are never held accountable to their campaign promises.
Alternatively, lock-downs are easing and it is summer. Plus, I know I now visit difference websites / podcasts that are more inline with my interests; as opposed to corporate media.
The news itself is not boring - the world is wilder and crazier than ever. If the news broadcasts and publications are boring, it's their fault. Stay relevant or lose your readers.
The news is pretty intense still, such as covid. it is just that January was an extreme outlier due to the Capitol protestors, trump leaving, and Biden inauguration.
I wonder to what extent this is affected by the influence of big tech companies. No doubt the advent of deplatforming, demonetization, and censorship has led to a change in exposure of various media outlets and news stories. Given the frequently inconsistent application of content policies, not to mention blackholing of political figures like Trump, I imagine the increased drop shown here with right leaning media is at least partially driven by companies that are left biased taking actions against right biased sources more frequently.
I went to CNN daily for 4 years to see what disaster the Trump admin was creating.
I basically am back to my pre-2016 involvement with politics which is “I don’t care”. This os why I will never support far-right or far-left politics: too frothy and requires paying attention.
I dont want to pay attention. I just want things to work and continue working.
So high inflation and higher unemployment is working but lowest unemployment ever, first time rise in real wage in almost a decade is not working?
Have you considered that you've been lied to by CNN? You say you went there 'to see what a shitshow the trump admin was' (to paraphrase), but it seems you just went searching for media that already fit your foregone conclusion.
Sure, I'm being lied to by everybody - literally all media is a lie to some degree. There is bias everywhere.
The system is working as designed. We are stuck in grid lock. Everything will resolve _somehow_ eventually... how it resolves doesn't matter to me honestly, I'm just a passenger on this ship.
Usually when I see that claim being made, it's more an indication that A. The partisan media is loathe to show what's happening, and B. They want to give their readers/viewers a plausible excuse for looking the other way.
Media is based on retaining your attention. If they claim news is slow, there is something they are holding above their well-being. Figure out what it is, and start looking harder there.