Access Over Principles: Media and the Chris Cuomo Problem
“I like to watch the news, because I don’t like people very much and when you watch the news… if you ever had an idea that people were really terrible, you could watch the news and know that you’re right.” – Frank Zappa
The tired conceit that comes from the news media themselves is that they are the all-important “fourth estate.” The truth tellers. Tasked with peeling back the curtain for the scruffy public and shining a light on corporate and government corruption. Speaking “truth to power,” as they commonly like to crow. Increasingly, however, the mainstream news media has outed itself as a full-time twenty-four hour propaganda operation intended to do little more than to sell the very power that they are trying to keep honest. Do not think, do not question, someone in the administration says it is true, and the media favours the administration, so it must be true and you are a paranoid “conspiracy theorist” if you insist otherwise. In the realms of so-called pop culture media, or “nerd media,” whatever you would like to call it, we have a phrase called “access journalism.” Access journalism is a practice whereby a particular media outlet agrees to report favourably on the subject of its coverage in exchange for increased access. In other words, you hype the latest Marvel movie, no matter how unwatchable it may be, in exchange for an interview with Robert Downey, Jr. You give whatever crap Bethesda Game Studios is limping to the barn with a glowing review in exchange for an interview with Pete Hines, or a tour of the studios with Todd Howard. That sort of arrangement.
This has existed in pop culture media for so long that it is a running joke at this point. However, it is increasingly present in mainstream media coverage as well. It is not uncommon to see a press secretary step down and take a job with a prominent news organization. A campaign manager or chief of staff will leave and be elevated to a prominent role as an anchor or a regular panelist on a primetime news show. Just over the course of the last four presidential administrations, we have seen the likes of George Stephanopoulos, Robert Gibbs, Marie Harf, Robert Reich, Jay Carney, David Axelrod, and many more too numerous to count rise to prominent roles – however brief some of them may be – in news media. Why? Because they provide access. Access to the Clintons, to the Obamas, etc. I was not surprised when Chris Cuomo, a middling “journalist” fluff morning news show Good Morning America was hired to a prominent gig by CNN in the wake of his brother’s ascent to the governorship of New York. Cuomo is a relatively prominent name in U.S. politics. Governor of New York is a very prominent position. Perpetual access to that power, why that could be good for ratings. I was also not surprised when it was revealed that Chris Cuomo abused his position at CNN to help his brother get out in front of controversies. The fact that he is only suspended at present is ridiculous. Not only should be be permanently let go, he should have never been hired in the first place.
Figures in the media wonder why the plebs and the peasants think that they are joke at best, and outright frauds at worst. The Cuomo situations is a perfect illustration of why. Chris Cuomo only rose to the level of prominence that he attained because of his proximity to the now former embattled governor of New York. It was not his prowess as a journalist, or even as a newsreader. If the media are so bent out of shape and in desperate need to restore the people’s faith in media institutions, then they need to run a scorched earth policy on every political hack that was hired for similar reasons to Cuomo. Every spouse, offspring, friend, and former employee in good standing of a prominent politician needs to be sent his walking papers, or at the very least be demoted. By continuing to hire people in such a manner, you perpetually keep the door open to a situation not at all unlike Cuomo’s.
Don’t get me wrong, American media has always been a joke. Celebrated, if not outright fetishized, figures like Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite were little more than Democratic Party hatchet men. Walter Duranty was an out and out apologist for the Stalinist regime. The thing is, back in those days, they at least made some effort to maintain the pretense of detachment from the subjects they were covering. Today, when everyone on air shouting to you about journalistic ethics and best practices is attached to a prominent political figure in some way, it’s impossible to view the news as anything more than the entertainment arm of an ever encroaching statist apparatus with totalitarian aspirations. They spout “democracy dies in darkness” whilst their entire function is to keep you in a state of darkness so you don’t know what’s going on. Don’t pay attention to mounting inflation, the royals in some foreign country had a baby. Some politician’s kid get busted snorting coke off of the back of a hooker whilst bragging about using his father’s political connections to enrich himself? A reckless presidential administrations drunken monetary policy causing the price of consumer goods to rise rapidly across the board? A raft of prominent global political figures hobnobbing with a well heeled pederast? Hang that nonsense, the royals just had a baby, Marvel just cast the first superhero movie to star a transracial demigender pansexual of no colour, and math is racist. That’s the media in a nutshell. When you replace every one of your mythical truth tellers with someone who has a vested interest in protecting the power that they are supposed to be speaking truth to against any criticism, you can not fault the great mass of the people for rightly distrusting you.
Fire Chris Cuomo. Publicly. Don’t suspend him. Don’t ask him to resign. Fire him. Shame him. Stop hiring people like him, and get back to at least being able to maintain some pretense of detachment from the people you are covering. This is the reason why cats like Joe Rogan, Tim Pool, Dave Smith, and the like have begun to replace the mainstream media in the minds of people under the age of 40, and in some over, because they are not perceived as being overly cozy with the political creatures that they cover. Getting the truth about politicians from the mainstream media these days is the equivalent of getting the facts about the effects of smoking from the tobacco companies.