Opinion / Christopher Cermak
Left to its own devices
Listen to conservative media outlets in the US these days – late-night Fox News anchors, for example, or popular podcasters, such as Ben Shapiro – and you’ll hear that the “mainstream media” has already lost all credibility. Perceived fawning over Joe Biden’s presidency is taken to demonstrate that the media cannot be trusted to cover him critically, any more than it could be trusted to cover Donald Trump uncritically. Much of this is, of course, overblown, not to mention the fact that many conservative commentators have a self-interest in portraying legacy media as overtly biased. Still, they do have a point.
After four years of an administration that openly called the press “the enemy of the people”, it’s hard, as a journalist, not to feel a certain amount of relief. And no matter how unbiased you would like to sound, that relief will be reflected in your writing and dealings with Biden’s people. It’s hard not to welcome the return of non-partisan health experts such as Anthony Fauci (pictured) briefing the press on behalf of the administration, for example. These are normal things that should happen in any presidency, Republican or Democrat, but that were found wanting under Trump.
And yet it’s easy to get carried away. Biden’s flurry of executive-led initiatives since taking office is not normal, for example. True, many restore the US to a bipartisan consensus that existed before Trump’s candidacy, such as ending a travel ban on Muslim-majority nations, returning to the World Health Organization, and (to a lesser extent) honouring the Iran nuclear deal and Paris Climate Agreement. But other initiatives, such as transgender service in the military, ending the Keystone XL pipeline and doubling the federal minimum wage, are progressive causes and – irrespective of whether they’re good or bad policy – should be treated as such.
The broader point for the media is this: reversing course might seem obvious and for some, an overdue return to normality. But all of these initiatives deserve to be defended, explained, analysed and scrutinised rather than taken at face value. After all, it’s the assumption that everything in the US was “normal” before Trump entered office that arguably got us into this mess in the first place.