Once more on the awesome, terrifying power of the press, the purpose and function of their fictions, and why they can be so effective even when everybody sees through them

In the space of just a month, Americans have witnessed two efforts to take each of their leading 2024 presidential candidates out of the running. The assassination attempt on the Republican frontrunner, Donald J. Trump, failed, if just barely; the pressure campaign spearheaded by the press and leading lights of the Democratic Party to force their presumptive nominee, the incumbent president Joe Biden, out of the race, finally succeeded. In combination, these events are unprecedented, and they have utterly transformed the presidential campaign mere months in advance of the election.

While the attempt on Trump’s life was the most dramatic, Biden’s downfall for me was even more spectacular. The man had been suffering from obvious cognitive degeneration throughout his presidency, and yet for years the media refused to recognise his mental deficits and branded those who voiced earnest misgivings as deluded right-wing extremists, conspiracy theorists or worse. Then, in the hours after Biden’s catastrophic debate on 27 June, the press totally reversed themselves, and for two weeks the president’s senility became the dominant theme of media not only in the United States, but also in Germany and across the West.

This reversal and its political implications inspired my piece on the Awesome, Terrifying Power of the Press – an essay I had not fully thought through at the time, and that I’d like to refine here. Specifically, I want to think more deeply about how media propaganda works and why it is so effective.

We often say that the press merely lies to us or sells us false versions of reality. That is certainly true to an extent, but the more I think about it, the less convinced I am that this is the true source of media power. Rather, I believe their influence is at once subtler and much more profound. They shape not so much our views of the world, as they do our views of how other people see the world, and in this way they exercise wide-ranging control over the kinds of arguments and opinions it is even possible to articulate.

But, as so often, I am getting ahead of myself.