Editor’s note: This is one of those moments when the flow of news feels like an assault on the senses. The trial of Donald Trump, the student protests, Gaza, the election campaign – will our trust in the media survive these traumas? Can our popular culture absorb them? Peter Bart, who lives on the West Coast, and Ted Johnson, Deadline’s political and media editor in Washington DC, provide their perspective on these questions.
TED JOHNSON: The Trump trial does not bode well for the public seeking balanced and in-depth reporting. This is, after all, the first time a former president has faced a criminal trial, and I fear the realization will be, well, exhaustion.
With the cameras off, TV networks are trying to achieve some sort of blanket coverage, with scrolls of legal analysis occasionally punctuated by Trump’s bursts of hallway rhetoric. Saturday’s White House correspondents’ dinner will be a forum for media intrigue and an excess of social media paranoia.
PETER BART: There are a few years between you and me, but what worries me is the feeling of repetition – we’re trapped in the 1960s again, but with even stranger political intrigue and a student rebellion that defies coherent analysis. But the differences are also important: millions of conscripts are not fighting in Vietnam. The nation has fortunately been spared a wave of political assassinations.
In retrospect, did we really understand what was swirling around us in the 1960s? The revelation of the Ellsberg Papers highlighted our ignorance about Vietnam, its causes and effects. The chaos at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago defied analysis – and it could soon be a repeat.
Hollywood’s attempt to uncover the political truth about the 1968 Congress ran into a distribution block at its own studio. The corporate rulers at Paramount effectively vetoed it Medium coolon the grounds that the studio was damaging their party.
JOHNSON: Will the public have access to the truth today amid the noise of political battles? Major news organizations are still struggling to cover Trump. Fox News hosts have effectively reaffirmed their loyalty to the former president after a brief flirtation with Ron DeSantis, but in reality it is social media and podcasts that dominate the MAGA show.
The polarization of the country has probably reached a breaking point. I look at a younger generation and worry about what is happening to their attention span. But am I personally much better? I scroll and scroll and scroll, only to find that my tentative optimism has been shattered by the media noise.
BEARD: The confusion of the moment is reflected in the ambiguity of the celebrity community in establishing a political base. Gen-Zs’ box office support for a knife-edge narrative Civil War illustrates the appetite for confrontation, but Streamerville’s passivity still favors romantic comedies and pseudo-reality programs.
One star explained that “too much is happening too fast, which makes it scary to take sides.” During the Vietnam War, John Wayne managed to get his films made, but anti-war activists like Robert Vaughn found job windows closing.
But historians like Jon Meacham remind us that crises are the norm for maintaining a free society. In 17th-century England, the stubborn Britons were plagued not only by colonial conflicts, civil war between royalists and parliamentarians, but also by spiritual battles between Catholics and Protestants. The subsequent kings Charles I and II were of different faiths (Charles II was Catholic).
JOHNSON: That’s a good point, and I feel like it doesn’t take much for a celebrity to decide that stepping into the political arena at this point only leads to distrust and mistrust. Dwayne Johnson faced severe backlash when he came out in support of Biden in 2020. Conspiracy theories were on the rise as Taylor Swift attended the Super Bowl, and right-wing media warned about the costs of her possible support for Biden. It hasn’t happened yet.