All this reminds me of 2016. Ever since, the phrase “But her emails” has become shorthand for criticism of the media coverage of that election that hyper-fixated on the controversy over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state. At the time, I believed that the email business was worth press attention. But the intensity of the coverage was out of sync with other aspects of this important contest. Most notably, Donald Trump’s background, with his long history of misconduct, did not spur a similar media uproar. And there was so much there: his past ties to organized crime; his sleazy business dealings; his supersized conflicts of interests; his advocacy of noxious right-wing conspiracy theories (and his praise of conspiracist Alex Jones); his multiple lies about himself and just about everything else; and more. (We at Mother Jones covered these subjects, but it was usually a lonely ride.) The novelty of Trump and the spectacle of Trump (those rallies!) drew all the notice. Not until the Access Hollywood “grab ’em by the pussy” video emerged did Trump face a media firestorm.
And then came another big media failure.
As soon as that video (seemingly) blew up the election, WikiLeaks began releasing Democratic material that had been swiped from the inbox of John Podesta, the chair of Clinton’s campaign, by Russian hackers. The leaks continued almost daily over the final four weeks of the campaign. The political press went gaga over transcripts of Clinton’s private speeches, internal emails, and other material. These leaks were indeed newsworthy at times. But the media missed the bigger story that was hiding in plain sight: Russia was attacking the 2016 election to help Trump become president. Worse, Trump was aiding and abetting this assault by echoing Vladimir Putin’s false claims that Moscow was not covertly intervening in the US race. He was betraying the nation he sought to lead.
Think about it. What’s more important? Reporting on the transcript of what Clinton had said during a speech to bankers (which was not that controversial) or focusing on the fact that a foreign adversary was undermining an American election to put its preferred candidate into the White House, with that candidate lending this regime a helping hand? Put that way, it’s a no-brainer, right? But that’s not how it played out. There was no media furor about the Russian operation and Trump’s exploitation of it.
This past week, the Justice Department announced it had disrupted the efforts of “Russian actors to create an AI-enhanced social media bot farm that spread disinformation in the United States and abroad. The social media bot farm used elements of AI to create fictitious social media profiles—often purporting to belong to individuals in the United States—which the operators then used to promote messages in support of Russian government objective.” This Moscow endeavor was aimed at reducing support in the United States for military assistance for Ukraine, but it easily could have pivoted to an attempt to influence the election.
The day after the Justice Department announcement, officials with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told reporters that Moscow has initiated a plan to mess with the 2024 election to aid Trump. “It’s all the tactics we’ve seen before, primarily through social media, efforts using influential US voices to amplify their narratives and other tactics,” an official said. “And as far as who they’re targeting, what we can say today is, Russia is sophisticated enough to know that targeting swing state voters is particularly valuable to them.” I saw this reported in a few media outlets: the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Al Jazeera, CNN, ABC, NBC, and Fox News. (Yes, Fox News.) But I didn’t catch anything in the New York Times or the Washington Post. And, most important, there was no overall hullabaloo about the United States being attacked yet again by Putin. Where are all the stories demanding that Trump denounce this and pressuring Republicans to address the matter?
Fixating on a liability of the Democratic candidate, letting Trump slide, and not making a fuss about a clandestine Russian operation to boost Trump. It’s déjà vu all over again. We all know that old saying: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. It seems we—or the conventional media—haven’t learned much from 2016. This year, a repeat of that media performance could well lead to another Trump presidency, but one far more dangerous and threatening to the survival of American democracy than the first.
