An insider speaks out on why legacy media is failing us right now

Trump and Musk are hijacking the state. Why can’t much of the press say so?

Hi, folks. Anand here. I don’t need to tell you that a lot of the legacy press is failing to rise to this moment. But I am a hopeful man. I believe some can learn to do better. Which is why I’m beyond excited to publish this trenchant essay by Brian Montopoli. He is not a media critic but a former media insider. He knows why the punches are pulled. He knows the mechanisms of blunting. He explains here what can change, how it can change, and why it must. — AG

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An insider speaks out on why legacy media is failing us right now

By Brian Montopoli

(The author is a writer, documentary filmmaker, and Emmy-winning television news producer. He worked as a producer for the “All In with Chris Hayes” show on MSNBC and as a senior political reporter for CBS News.)

Back in 2017, Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah wrote a satirical column laying out what it might look like if the Western media covered the United States the same way it covers foreign countries:

This week international analysts are sounding the alarm on the increasing instability of the United States after an outbreak of gun violence, government corruption scandals and failure to provide basic services to citizens.

Her point: These media outlets don’t hesitate to use phrases like “increasing instability” and “corruption scandals” when discussing so-called developing nations. But they steadfastly refuse to use such unequivocal language closer to home.

I’ve been thinking about that column as I try to process the massive failure of the mainstream media to meet this pivotal moment in American history.

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As Anand laid out in sobering detail this morning, it is both justifiable and necessary to characterize Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s joint assault on our government as an attempted coup. The richest man on earth — with the support of the most powerful man on earth — is now flagrantly defying our laws in order to destroy and reshape our government for his own benefit.

Musk’s moves include gaining access to federal payment systems, including our Social Security data and systems that manage Medicare and Medicaid; kneecapping the U.S. Agency for International Development and then working with Trump to effectively shutter the agency, America’s primary tool for the expression of soft power; usurping Congress’s power to allocate federal spending; and taking control of broad swaths of the federal government. Trump, meanwhile, is purging the government of civil servants and law enforcement agents he considers enemies; effectively nullifying laws passed by Congress on immigration and technology; and paralyzing agencies by firing key staff.

Trump is not a king, no matter how much he might wish otherwise. The founding fathers designed the government of the United States to constrain the power of any single individual. (That’s why the legal authority to control spending and make laws rests not with the president, but with Congress.) It should go without saying that a president cannot do this stuff — nor can he legally empower a private, unelected citizen to effectively take over the government.

Yet Musk is doing exactly that. “There is not one single entity holding Musk accountable,” historian Douglas Brinkley told The New York Times. “It’s a harbinger of the destruction of our basic institutions.”

If this were happening in some distant foreign land, our media outlets would not hesitate to characterize it as an assault on the rule of law — an attempted coup from the inside. Yet the mainstream media has thus far largely refused to do just that. The Associated Press only uses the word “coup” when citing comments by Democrats; the big broadcast networks, having been intimidated into paying Trump off, have shown an (understandable) reticence to make big, broad statements that could further enrage the lawless president.

Then there’s The New York Times: While its coverage of Trump and Musk has grown more muscular in recent days, the word “coup” has not appeared in a political context outside of the opinion pages. And consider the headlines: After Trump announced hugely damaging tariffs on U.S. allies (which he would later back down from), The Times announced, “Trump Favors Blunt Force in Dealing With Foreign Allies and Enemies Alike” — phrasing that wouldn’t have been out of place on a White House press release. (The same could be said for, “Amid the Chaos, Trump Has a Simple Message: He’s in Charge.”)

When Trump froze spending for cancer research, Meals on Wheels, and other crucial programs, The Times’s headline struggled for balance — “Funding Freeze Sets Off New Fight Over Trump Vision For Government” — instead of just telling the truth, “Trump Cuts Off Funding For Homeless Veterans and Cancer Patients.”

And today the paper of record gave us, “An Unbound Trump Pushes An Improbable Plan For Gaza.” Over at Bluesky, Anand suggested a different formulation: “Trump proposes the illegal ethnic cleansing and colonization of Gaza, destabilizing region.”

As a veteran of the mainstream media, I am not unsympathetic to the position that these outlets find themselves in — and not only because of the existential threat they now face from a president deeply hostile to a free press. I spent much of my career working in these organizations, including eight years at CBS News, much of it as senior political reporter for its website.

There are many smart and talented people at CBS News and similar outlets who can see exactly what is going on. But the top brass largely believed that maintaining credibility (and reaching the broadest possible audience) meant appearing politically neutral; we were expected to be equally critical of both sides, regardless of whether they actually deserved equal criticism. As a result, there was tremendous pressure not to make big, bold statements, no matter how much the moment might demand it. Instead, we were expected to cover each new outrage in a vacuum — and never, ever put the pieces together.

That’s what we are seeing now: Our government is facing the prospect of a death by a thousand cuts, but the mainstream media are focusing on each cut as though it exists in a vacuum. It is considered unsayable to acknowledge the fact that, right now, the American republic as we know it is bleeding out.

One of the only times this unspoken rule was broken came in 1968, when Walter Cronkite’s “Report From Vietnam” finally acknowledged the broad reality of our disastrous war — and arguably helped bring it to an end. But journalists at legacy organizations no longer have the power and influence to take such a stand. Instead, mainstream media outlets are on the defensive and deeply fearful of the consequences of acknowledging the stark reality that our government itself is now under attack.

The good news, such as it is, is that we now have access to alternative media outlets that do not have to pull their punches — including the one you are reading now. But even a diminished mainstream media still has a broad reach, and it is crucial that journalists do not simply jump from scandal to scandal — which is what the administration wants, as articulated in its flood-the-zone strategy. Hundreds of outrageous stories have already come out of Trump’s second term. But they are all part of one larger story. And if legacy media won’t tell, it’s up to the rest of us to step in.

For journalists and editors and headline writers genuinely interested in doing better, here are some humble suggestions from someone who once worked inside the beast:

• Do not parrot Trump and Musk’s language or framing

• Stress the unconstitutionality and illegality of their actions in every headline

• Do not conform to outdated ideas of neutrality that water down reality

• Focus on the impact and outcomes, instead of process and bluster

• And always, always, always keep a relentless focus on the bigger picture

We are in the middle of an anti-constitutional coup attempt by the richest and most powerful men on earth to destroy the U.S. government. Americans need to understand the threat their country faces if we hope to protect it. And the media needs to give them the tools to reach that understanding.

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Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for MoveOn