Katrina vanden Heuvel: What Is the Media’s Responsibility?

Katrina vanden Heuvel: What Is the Media’s Responsibility?

Katrina vanden Heuvel: What Is the Media’s Responsibility?

The mainstream media is falling victim to a cult of balance—and it’s time for progressives to fight back by more effectively leveraging their message.

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“The mainstream media has bought into this view that we’re marginal,” said Nation editor and publisher Katrina Vanden Heuvel in a fiery speech at the Campaign for America’s Future “Take Back the American Dream” conference in Washington, DC last month. “We are not marginal. Our views are the majority views.” The mainstream media is falling victim to a cult of balance, she argues—and it’s time for progressives to fight back by more effectively leveraging their message. You can read more of Katrina’s analysis here.

—Teresa Cotsirilos

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Even before February 28, the reasons for Donald Trump’s imploding approval rating were abundantly clear: untrammeled corruption and personal enrichment to the tune of billions of dollars during an affordability crisis, a foreign policy guided only by his own derelict sense of morality, and the deployment of a murderous campaign of occupation, detention, and deportation on American streets. 

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As we’ve seen over and over, this administration uses lies, misdirection, and attempts to flood the zone to justify its abuses of power at home and abroad. Just as Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth offer erratic and contradictory rationales for the attacks on Iran, the administration is also spreading the lie that the upcoming midterm elections are under threat from noncitizens on voter rolls. When these lies go unchecked, they become the basis for further authoritarian encroachment and war. 

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