Media Criticism

Robby Soave | 1.25.2024 1:33 PM

Chris Cillizza is a former television pundit and political reporter. Beginning in 2005, he blogged about elections for The Washington Post, focusing on lightning-fast political analysis. In 2017, he joined CNN as an on-air commentator, writer, and all-around politics explainer. His superficial punditry, boldly incorrect predictions, and arbitrarily numbered lists earned him many detractors on both the right and the left, and CNN laid him off in 2022.

I hate to pile on since the man no longer speaks and writes on behalf of a large mainstream media outlet. (He is currently writing for Substack.) But on Wednesday, he made a claim on X—where he has 600,000 followers—that is completely, and instructively, wrong.

It just didn't happen.

And, again, no journalist said "learn to code." And neither did Biden. https://t.co/Tkd6lpvEnt

— Chris Cillizza (@ChrisCillizza) January 24, 2024

Our story begins with Cillizza observing—accurately—that there's something mean-spirited about rejoicing in another person's economic misfortune. Specifically, the Los Angeles Times recently laid off 20 percent of the newsroom, a reflection of the difficult times for many journalistic outlets. Conservatives perceive the media as an incredibly hostile enemy, and many on the right are positively giddy at the prospect of journalists facing unemployment.

The media industry does, in fact, have a lot of problems—including, in some cases, biases against nonliberal perspectives that create blind spots—but many individual reporters and editors and entire newsrooms are doing important work. That work often involves shining a spotlight on local issues; calling attention to waste, fraud, and abuse; and investigating corrupt government figures. As the Washington Examiner's Tim Carney put it, no one is better served by shrinking newspapers than "crooked or inept politicians." And in any case, even if the media landscape is frequently toxic, it's cruel to gratuitously champion firings.

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Robby Soave is a senior editor at Reason.

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