All Politics Is Now Media Criticism

John Halpin in Persuasion:

Donald Trump made an entire career out of whining about the mainstream media and still lives on nuggets of outrage dispensed to the faithful about how unfairly the media covered his glorious rule and the election he says was stolen from him. Democrats constantly gripe about the press identifying obvious weaknesses with Joe Biden, such as his age, his abysmal poll numbers, the lackluster support for his economic agenda, and his inability to hold together a basic coalition. Meanwhile, ideological outsiders and self-described “truth-tellers” have turned complaints about the media into a full-time business model of caterwauling about supposed censorship of their out-of-the-mainstream or conspiratorial views.

Politics used to be about “who gets what, when, how” in Harold Lasswell’s famous formulation. But today it’s more about who said what, when, and how—and why everyone is so upset about it.

More here.