Today’s guest is very much NOT on the right, but he agrees. Tom Johnson is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Journalism and his book
The Press and Democratic Backsliding makes the claim that media have failed democracy by losing control of the information landscape and allowing anti-democratic voices to thrive. In his view, the strength of the MAGA movement is not merely a cultural or political phenomenon. It’s a failure of journalism.Those are fightin’ words. Tom and I talk about the role of the press in spinelessly empowering authoritarianism, about the media’s lopsided obsession with then-candidate Joe Biden’s age, its bias towards conflict and negativity, and, finally, lest you entirely despair, what to do about it all. So there’s hope.
