The Media Is The Great Unifier, Bringing Together Critics On The Left And The Right

Navarrette Nation Substack — A Journo’s Journal 6/11/25

Critical Thinking At A Critical Time

Every Wednesday
648 words; 7 min

It’s a miracle. The immigration enforcement crisis now in its fifth day in Los Angeles has brought to the surface the one thing that liberals and conservatives seem to agree on: “It’s all the media’s fault.”

As for what “it” is, well, near as I can tell, it is everything. The media deserves the blame for anything, and everything, that goes wrong in politics. This is what elements of both parties seem to believe.

Notice I added the qualifier “in politics.” The media doesn’t usually catch hell for things that go wrong in sports, business, entertainment, education, science, medicine, law or any other subject you see covered in the news. There’s a reason for that. Going into politics means you never have to say you’re sorry you messed up — much less take any of the responsibility that should come your way for messing up.

This trend seems to have started with Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election. Certainly, politicians and members of the media have been scrapping for generations. But Clinton was one of the first seekers of elective office to take to the next level the practice of blaming the media. When Clinton served as Secretary of State and she got caught maintaining a separate email server outside of the State Department for official government correspondence, she shrugged off the ruckus as “fake news.” She didn’t do anything wrong, she insisted. Rather, we in the media were in the wrong for covering the story.