Modern Journalism: Monkey See, Monkey Do

(Yes, I know that baboons aren’t technically monkeys, but I decided that they made for a more dramatic picture — deal with it)

PJ Media’s Scott Pinsker offers a spot-on précis of how, and the why, of the media’s coverage of news events:

SHAMEFUL: Media Attacks Republican Women as Ugly — and Why It’s About to Get So Much Worse

…. Divining the mainstream media’s tea leaves is about 25% understanding human nature, and 75% knowing how the media works. The media might be monstrous, vain, and partisan, but they’re still comprised of flesh-and-blood human beings. They’re members of a very specific tribe, and within that tribe, there’s groupthink, social expectations, a code of conduct, and shared values. 

More often than not, the real story isn’t what they published — but why they published it. Once you figure that part out, it’s easy to stay ahead of ‘em.

I’ll show you how it works:

The first telltale sign is when the media outlets at the top of the hierarchy all begin publishing the same stories.

The media industry is a top-down ecosystem; the minnows take their cues from the whales. Even today, you’d be surprised how many small market news directors will religiously tear through The New York Times before assigning any stories.

Why?

Because that’s how they were trained. 

As a practical matter, it empowers the larger media outlets to set the national agenda, because this ecosystem gives their stories legs: First The New York Times will report on it; then the mid-tier and low-tier ones echo it; then The Times will circle back with a follow-up story about how this is a huge deal in the heartland — citing those mid- and low-tier outlets’ stories a few days later.

It’s incestuous, self-serving, and won’t work indefinitely, but it guarantees a story will stay in circulation for at least a week — and with just a little luck, much longer than that. 

Either way, in today’s 24/7 media culture, a week is an eternity. You can do a lot of damage in a week.

The second sign is when the same stories all echo the same themes.

When a mainstream media thought leader, like The New York Times, NBC News, or The Atlantic gives a story their “seal of approval,” it’s kind of like the phenomenon with the ugly dude and the hot girlfriend: That editorial “spin” has already won the support of their industry’s A-Listers.

If you’re a low-rung journalist with ambition, it’s awfully tempting to hop aboard that bandwagon and cry “One of us!” — and so, lots of ‘em do. (Hey, they wanna work at The New York Times one day, too.)

When three or more A-Listers in the mainstream media release the same story with the same theme, it means you’ll be hearing about it for no less than a week. If the story fails, it’ll go away.

But conservatives don’t get to decide if a story fails! 

That takes us to the third sign: Stories that animate liberals will always be elevated.

This usually means that liberal causes, politicians, and policies will be promoted and conservative ones trashed, but not always. Sometimes, liberals like to read about doom-and-gloom — that “The End Is Nigh!” (They’re pessimistic by nature and enjoy doom-scrolling.)

But no matter what, the stories and spin will always reflect a VERY leftwing worldview.

Why?

Because the media is VERY liberal and they’re primarily concerned with impressing each other. 

Between 95% and 97% of all journalists’ donations go to Democrats. If you’re a journalist, your next job will be in a liberal office. Whoever hires you will be liberal; your new colleagues will be liberal. Your professional success (mostly) depends on being well-liked by liberal gatekeepers.

In this ecosystem, conservatives just don’t matter. (And, when you read their work, it certainly shows.)

I’ll give you a quick example: Yesterday, three mainstream media heavyweights — The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Independent — all released stories with the exact same theme: The Trump administration is filled with virtue-signaling, cosplaying, unmanly and/or wrongly-gendered phonies who are ugly-looking.

Pinsker proceeds to show this process by citing three articles on exactly the same theme: “Republican women are ugly and fake” by the NYT. the Atlantic, and the Independent, all published within 24 hours of each other, and he predicts that Jimmy Kimmel and other late night “comics” will have picked it up and run with it by tonight. That, in turn, will spur more coverage by more “journalists”, and it will be the hot theme; until the monkeys are steered to a new one by their betters.