Politico’s New Owner Signals He’s Doubling Down On Feckless ‘He Said, She Said’ Journalism
New Politico owner and Axel Springer CEO Mathias Dopfner has been craving U.S. press attention, and got more of it than he wanted this week. Dopfner was the focus of a not particularly flattering profile in the Washington Post showing, among other things, that the German billionaire was excited by the prospect of a second Trump term and really liked a lot of the stuff Trump was up to:
Dopfner went on to argue that Trump had made the right moves on five of what he deemed the six most important issues of the last half century - defending the free democracies" against Russia and China, pushing NATO allies to up their contributions, tax reforms," and Middle East peace efforts, as well as challenging tech monopolies...No American administration in the last 50 years has done more."
Most of those claims, by any objective measurement of truth (not that we do that anymore), are comically wrong. The Trump GOP's version of antitrust reform," for example, has been a bumbling, cronyistic, hollow mess. And the Trump era tax cuts generally involved throwing billions of dollars in tax relief at giant predatory monopolies like AT&T... in exchange for jack shit.
When pressed about the email by the Post, Dopfner allegedly tried to lie about it. Then, when the lie didn't work, he tried to pretend he was just being provocative." A stellar start for a guy trying to position himself as a much-needed elixir to very broken U.S. journalism:
Asked about the email, Dopfner initially responded with a forceful denial. That's intrinsically false," he said. That doesn't exist. It has never been sent and has never been even imagined."
When shown a printout of the text, Dopfner allowed a glimmer of recognition. It's possible, he said, that he may have sent the email as an ironic, provocative statement in the circle of people that hate Donald Trump," because that's exactly the kind of ironic, provocative thing that Dopfner, a garrulous and enthusiastic texter, likes to do.
The profile paints a picture of a wealthy billionaire who doesn't actually understand how the U.S. media industry he's now a major player in actually works. Dopfner is at the vanguard of a number of executives and outlets that are responding to surging fascism by avoiding hard truths and heading further to the right, all the while pretending this rightward shift is objective and non-biased.
Dopfner's media ventures (see: Bild) are quite often opinionated, sensational, and/or just flat out rightward leaning, and Dopfner is on record lauding Trump and lambasting the diabolical wokes. Yet Dopfner then gets to pretend that he has a grand vision for Politico where it operates above the polarized" fray:
A newcomer to the community of billionaire media moguls, Dopfner is given to bold pronouncements and visionary prescriptions. He's concerned that the American press has become too polarized - legacy brands like the New York Times and The Washington Post drifting to the left, in his view, while conservative media falls under the sway of Trumpian alternative facts." So in Politico, the fast-growing Beltway political journal, he sees a grand opportunity.
We want to prove that being nonpartisan is actually the more successful positioning," he said in an interview with The Washington Post. He called it his biggest and most contrarian bet."
Politico (like Axios, the New York Times, and countless others) is already routinely accused of delivering rather timid, centrist-to right leaning he said she said" or view from nowhere" reporting extremely focused on not upsetting sources and advertisers. It's the type of reporting that often comically portrays all issues, even issues with very obvious truths (climate change, fascism, white supremacy) with false equivalency kid gloves, then tries to pass off this truth-averse fecklessness as somehow sagely nonbiased.
"There are two words we need to remove from our media vocabulary right now & that is 'both sides.' This crutch, this reliance on 'both sides' as a kind of lazy way of covering our political moment is deeply dangerous."
My comments to @semaforben this morning in DC - watch/share: pic.twitter.com/edPKXvAGFL
- Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) September 7, 2022
Outlets pursuing this route aren't actually interested in being non-partisan," they're interested exclusively in what makes money. And in the U.S., feckless, he said, she said" both sides" reporting maximizes potential revenue and avoids offending sources and advertisers, which is why both CNN and CBS have also been pursuing it despite plenty of hard lessons on the perils of this trajectory over the last decade.
There is absolutely zero indication that Dopfner, poised to be a major player in the U.S. media over the next decade, understands absolutely any of this. The Post profile paints the picture of a wealthy jet setter who is politically right wing but pretends otherwise so he can attend the right DC and NY dinner parties, and/or is not really even sure where his own politics lie (despite some pretty obvious indicators):
[Dopfner] worries about what he sees as cancel culture, and in private conversations, friends say, he gripes about identity politics. One of his sons works as the chief of staff to Peter Thiel, the conservative-libertarian tech billionaire turned MAGA kingmaker, but Dopfner has only met him a few times and says they are not close. He does profess a fondness for contrarians," though, and called provocateur Tesla CEO Elon Musk, currently embroiled in litigation over his noisy attempt to take over Twitter and upend its moderation policies, one of the most inspiring people I've ever met."
What the U.S. media needs is greater diversity, a massive infusion of funding, an army of courageous young journalists, better pay, far less consolidation, and leadership that actually understands not only the reality most of us inhabit but the very real threat surging fascism is posing to Democracy. Leadership that's fully aware how both sides" reporting is routinely exploited by grifters and authoritarians.
What we keep getting instead are loud-mouthed, ultra-rich, center-right moguls with no shortage of opinions but little actual insight, pushing the kind of chickenshit false equivalency reporting that created a significant chunk of our problems in the first place.