Like everything else in our reality, media is ever evolving. The question is whether it is evolving in the right direction. That question could not be clearer following Marjorie Taylor Greene’s interview on 60 Minutes. Someone somewhere along the line said that the fourth estate’s job was to call balls and strikes. However, after decades of accusations that the mainstream media is liberal, mainstream media decided their job was to make sure there were an equal number of walks and strikeouts. It sounds the same and sometimes looks the same, but in a world where one side of the ideological divide has allegedly gone insane, calling both pitchers the same doesn’t do the same thing when one is throwing pitches against the backstop and into the dirt.

The decision to interview a MTG cannot be an easy one. On the one hand, she is a leader within the modern GOP. It is difficult to ignore someone with as much clout and sway as she has in the modern GOP. Yet, the modern GOP has become something beyond a mainstream political party these days. She is anything but mainstream. So, it begs the question of whether someone like her deserves to be thrust into the mainstream. One could argue that it introduces an important current figure to an audience that might not be familiar with her. If done correctly one could claim that showing her warts and all could be a public service should her star rise even more. On the other hand, you are single-handedly putting forth ideas that are far outside of the mainstream. There is an inherent danger there.

If one were to look at the best possible outcome they could compare this to the Katie Couric Sarah Palin interview. Palin was the vice presidential nominee for the GOP and seemed very charismatic. That was until the Couric interview revealed that she knew very little. The interview is attached for anyone that really wants to relive that, but Couric did very little pushback. She played matador and allowed Palin to self-destruct on her own. One could argue that Lesley Stohl was trying to do the same thing in her interview of MTG. She allowed those crazy ideas to come bubbling over with very little pushback. Democrats were called pedophiles. We know she once called school shootings false flags. Palin was revealed to be an empty suit. Was MTG revealed to be an extremist? Only time will tell.

Was it wise to give her a platform in the first place? That’s not an easy question to answer. What would have been the most effective way to handle the interview? That’s an even harder question to answer. As satisfying as it would seem to just ambush her with all of her crap over the last half decade, it is possible that such a gamut would backfire. Those that know of her have already formed an opinion. Those that haven’t might feel like ambushing her feels cruel and unnecessary. Allowing her to throw out her manifesto unchallenged doesn’t feel right either. The key was for average everyday Americans to come away seeing her for what she really is. How much faith do you have in the intellect and gumption of the average American?

There comes a time when it’s hard to know the difference between a banana republic and the greatest system of government devised in human history. Sometimes it’s just a Thursday. Dictionary.com defines a banana republic as “any exploitative government that functions poorly for its citizenry while disproportionately benefitting a corrupt elite group or individual.” Gee, I couldn’t have said it better myself.

There are any number of biases we have to sift through on a daily basis. The worst one is what I would lovingly call the superlative bias. In short, it is the concept that whatever event we are currently going through is the best or worst event of its type in history.

In some sense it makes perfect sense. Sensationalism sells and nothing kills the sensationalism like the admission that we have been through this before. Just this week we saw reporting that pointed to what most people would call treason during the Iran hostages scandal of the late 1970s and 1980. Americans back then would have been flummoxed to hear that news if it had immediately come out. Fortunately or unfortunately we did not hear about those events until long after they actually happened. If American voters had known Richard Nixon was conspiring with North Vietnam then maybe he doesn’t become president.

The job of the media is becoming increasingly more difficult as these stories become news instantaneously. We learned about Russian interference in the 2016 election almost virtually as it was happening. We learned about various Trump scandals almost immediately. We had all of the evidence we needed. Hell, it was all on tape. It has to be difficult when things are that simple. In a nation where conspiracy theories reign (and rain), it seems impossible to believe something so simple. We keep getting told that arrests and indictments are imminent. We saw that in 2017 and 2018 with the Russia scandal. We saw that with the first impeachment following Ukraine. We saw that with the second impeachment and January 6th. We have seen it since the bloviating moron left the White House.

Every time an arrest or indictment doesn’t happen it makes you doubt the story itself. The press is just crying wolf again. Maybe this is another “trumped” up charge. It’s really not that serious. Someone that is such an accomplished businessman would never do something so blatantly obvious like that. Except he did at every turn.

The current and former jackass in chief is even leaning into it. He is releasing his own rumors that he will be indicted. Why? It leans into the narrative. If he gets indicted for Stormy Daniels then it is proof in his mind that he is being persecuted. He did all this other stuff and it is a one night stand with a porn star that gets him? He must not have done any of those other things.

Political prosecutions are tricky business. If you overplay your hand then you guarantee the other side will do the same when they get the opportunity. There was talk from day one about impeaching Joe Biden. What’s the charge? They don’t know and couldn’t explain it if they did. They just know that it’s not fair that you busted our guy when he obviously broke every law in the book. Just rest assured that this latest scandal will be the worst of all. At least it will be until the next one.

One of the hallmarks of a fascist state is controlled mass media. In totalitarian states this becomes comical. Supposedly, Kim Jung Un played an entire round of golf and had a hole in one on every hole. Supposedly, he doesn’t ever go to the bathroom. These were ridiculous claims and most people with a pulse can simply set it aside as ludicrous. Yet, if you don’t have access to the internet or to independent news sources you will probably believe a lot of it. Whether the dictator of North Korea is a great golfer or not really doesn’t matter. However, if we look at what is going on in Russia and Ukraine then it becomes deadly serious. Vladimir Putin is apparently taking on Nazism. For 90 percent of the world this notion is ridiculous. It is the ten percent that aren’t getting access to straight news that don’t understand the truth.

People often focus on mass media and the problems with mass media, but we have a bigger problem with smaller media. Print news is a dying business. There are tons of reasons for that. For one, they just have not managed to find a way to maximize new media sources like the internet to their advantage. Moreover, there were some bad business practices that they couldn’t correct. The Houston Chronicle for years could not consistently get us a paper. I’m not sure why. We moved a few different times and had different distributors, but the problem was the same. We subscribed to the Sunday New York Times and the Washington Post, but they couldn’t get that to us either.

We dealt with customer service and they didn’t seem to care until we threatened to unsubscribe. Finally, we did. In addition to the Chronicle there were tons of smaller newspapers that would cover local events. Sometimes it was local sports. Sometimes they were school board meetings and other smaller organizations. This has been noted before. The world really doesn’t change much on top. People can watch C-SPAN and the mass media outlets will always send people to Washington to cover what’s going on. The same is likely true of Austin and other statehouses. When the Chronicle and other papers shut down it means that no one is going to those school board meetings. When no one is there to watch then suddenly almost anything is possible. After all, who is there to stop them?

This is how things happen. It rarely ever starts off big. It usually starts with the grass roots. Small communities rail against critical race theory. Small communities call for the banning of certain books. Small communities call for curriculum to be changed to meet their worldview. When there is no one there to cover it then there aren’t enough people that will know what they are doing. You get the small minority and the small minority is almost always skewed one way or another. So, maybe it isn’t primarily a mass media problem. Maybe it is a local media problem. Democracy dies in darkness.