In late July, Biden announced a rule to strengthen access to mental health care for about 150 million Americans. Network nightly news broadcasts are the most-watched news format in the country, garnering anywhere from 4 to 7 million viewers each night, and not a single broadcast covered the mental health news.
What possible explanation could there be for this? Does America have a suicide epidemic? A teenage suicide crisis? A veterans’ suicide crisis? A middle-aged white male suicide crisis?
Check. Check. Check. Check.
"Does America have a loneliness epidemic? A massive mental health crisis?
Check. Check.
The important thing to remember though is this: presidential actions to help real people aren’t news.
Here is another razor sharp insight from Hamby that slices through the usual platitudes and nonsense regarding what is and isn’t news. Sensationalism sells. It always has."
I am going to use this as a Discussion Question in my Abnormal Psychology class. We are discussing Mental Health and the media
It’s all exhausting, frustrating and full of nonsense. I don’t have the TV on during the day, unless there is something extraordinary happening or Sunday football. I try to read articles that make sense. My personal favorite is Deadline White House, but I have found myself tuning out after the first 30 minutes or so. Even Nicolle is running the Trump show. I get it and I don’t. A couple of weeks ago Nicolle Wallace asked the question, how do the Democrats break through the 24/7 Trump show? What should the media being doing? As I watched, my thought was, just stop it. Stop the endless experts saying the same thing over and over. Give Trump 30 minutes and then move on. Dear God it is endless. That Biden is helping multitudes of Americans and our 3rd world infrastructure is finally being fixed, should be top of the hour news. But it isn’t.
I’m typing this sitting outside, as I do every morning, watching the ducks and the 2 fat groundhogs. All far more interesting than the news.
Really good, Steve. I felt your anger and frustration come through your words. Also thanks for elevating David Pepper. There is some great work going on in Ohio, fighting against the authoritarian GOP regime there. As a neighbor, in Indiana, I hope they succeed.
“What will be most obvious is that democracy dies at noon, in the plain light of day, slowly and painfully over many long tedious years.”
Never sager words. I would go a step further and quote Hutchins:
“The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.” ---Robert Maynard Hutchins
As far as the media refusing to report on mental health and only focuses on sensationalism; I agree. Perhaps because the MSN is as mentally disturbed as Trump and his minions. We call Trump a transactional president, who only care about himself: True!
Yet, the MSN is corporate owned and they only care about ratings and profits; sounds transactional and selfish as well.
We rail on Fox for being fake news and telling their audience what they want to hear: True! Yet, the MSN decides what is best for all of us, rails when any administration fails, yet when a solution is found, they couldn’t care less, instead where stuck watching Giuliani hair dye drip down his face at the Four Seasons Landscaping. How quaint!
If America dies, it will have many fathers; and the MSN is more than complicit. That’s why having incredible independent writers, journalists and truth-sayers is more important today, more than ever and the reason I support substack....:)
Aug 20, 2023·edited Aug 20, 2023Liked by Steve Schmidt
Steve Schmidt, this is an important, profound, bedrock, long article. Unfortunately, long tends to be a stopper for most Americans, whose response to visually noting "long" is, "Meh! Feed me bits and bytes, and make it snappy!" I know this to be true because I dwell among them. And sometimes, I AM them. You and Charlie Sykes and a handful of others (e.g., Joyce Vance, Heather Cox Richardson, Neal Katyal) are credible, informed truth-tellers and analysts to whom more people should pay frickin' attention.
So, what we have here are: (1) journalists; (2) truth-telling analysts; (3) people-pleasing, chit-chatting entertainers featuring BREAKING NEWS!!!; and (4) Fox-whatever-the-hell-it-is. Media do bear much of the burden of the empty podium syndrome. Everyone who reads here knows that. Think OJ Simpson and the recent Don the Don convoy coverage. I suppose there's a place for that. But your phrase "democracy dies at noon, in the plain light of day, slowly and painfully over many long tedious years" is/should be an eyeball-popping waker-upper for sentient/semi-sentient human beings in the U.S.A.
Where am I going with this (pauses for breath) long blather? Not sure. But of this I am sure. This foundering country needs better access to truth-tellers. I remember watching you, Steve Schmidt, speaking from your kitchen as part of The Lincoln Project. I knew you'd make eye contact, that you'd straight-talk, that I'd laugh out loud at your occasional snarky truths, and that you weren't following the money (curse of big media).
I've over-stayed my welcome here. Signing off to do a Big Ponder.
excellent. I'm a former journalist myself and can attest to this sad state of the media. I blame the top editors more than the reporters; the top editors make the assignments, very often write the misleading clickbait headlines, and decide what goes in the lineup. As for "if it bleeds, it leads..." this has always been true of the press. A look back to the NYT a century ago displays this in full, and less lofty papers do the same thing. The mainstream media in general is one big fat lemming -jumping cliff, while the right-wing media is just one rolling conspiracy theory.
I have been so disappointed in the MSM for years now. Assume it has to do with all the DARK MONEY purchasing them. This was perfect …absolutely perfect. I particularly like the line…. How about half past never, ever.
Thank you for this excellent post. Joe Biden has done some excellent things for the American people and almost no one is covering them. The press is too busy covering the Trump whisperers. No Edward R Murrows here.
In politics , in media , in corporations the challenge is no longer recognizing the bad apples among the many good . The challenge is to find the few good apples among the rot and rotting. To find the truth among the lies.
How is it that millions and millions of Americans have lost the will? the ability ? the tools ? to even try to discern between the truth and the lies?
Spot on Steve, we need the White House press corps like we need a hole in our head, I like the suggestion “how about never”. The sewer full of lies that MSM is producing has captured the attention of a huge number of our fellow citizens, who don’t know up from down anymore, that’s a fact plain and simple. Millions of Americans vote for people who have no interest in their wellbeing, because they can’t see the forest for the trees. If you didn’t get an education, and you live in a world where education is valued, whose fault is that? The world is changing, as it always has been, the maggots base is uneducated and wants desperately to turn back the clock to what they see as a simpler time that doesn’t exist, and never did, MSM makes billions pandering to that crowd. The lunatic preacher is emblematic of that audience, clueless in the extreme.
This was my question about the 23 August GOP event called a debate: will the mass appeal media and others focus on absence v any substance that occurs? Will snark and gotchas matter more for grabbing an audience (..member by .. anything) than any policy statement that I doubt and hope (this time, Lucy, don’t pull the football) occurs?
My wife, Shelagh and I and two friends just spent a stimulating week at the Chautauqua Institution, probably the first week in decades where no one turned on a television. Instead we listened to Bob Woodward, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, David Axelrod, Carl Rove (still the snake from the Garden of Eden), and a host of other bright minds. It couldn’t have been more clear that Liberals care about society and Conservatives care about themselves and America is doomed if Society does not become paramount. Gillibrand, in particular, with a history of beneficial initiatives and collaboration with others coupled with boundless energy and determination showed us how it should be. One hundred of her in the U.S. Senate and the world would be a far better place.
But we do regularly watch television and the example of Biden and Mental Health and no coverage is the story of Biden and no coverage. While in the knife fight that is U.S. politics, we need Biden’s many accomplishments to be celebrated, we should see “boring” as a compliment, somebody just doing their job. Certainly his predecessor was not boring, while being criminal, reckless, corrupt, incompetent and uncaring just for a start, one lingers for a look at a car wreck and he was a beauty.
Based on what he has done for people, Biden should have a 50 to 60 per cent approval rating and be a shoo-in for a second term. When you do things for 150 million people you are doing it for society, not just individuals, and Biden’s record rivals FDR given the hand he was dealt. So, who cares? I think Americans have been taught to put themselves ahead of their society just when it needs to be the other way around. As long as there is Fox News and its kind to stir the cauldron of hate, combined with the disastrous corrosion of the Republican Party, the American experience will be an endless string of car wrecks to distract from the compassionate, deeply beneficial actions of the Biden administration so essential to pulling America out of this morass. If they can just get passed Donald Trump, who descended the escalator to con America into the worst administration in the country’s history.
Sure, the media has had its head turned way too much in covering the Trump wreck, but it will be the media that gives thorough coverage to his undoing, especially if cameras can penetrate the courtroom. One can only hope that the more benign media can lead the way and America, like a responsible dog owner, learns how to pick up after itself.
Just stop covering everything trump - except for his arrest, trials, convictions and incarceration That is news.. Everything else about the fat man is theatrics
Blame who you want, it’s about money. Media, whether social, print, TV etc, are looking for followers, ratings, and attention, cuz that’s where the money is. Democracy and the Constitution have gotten in the way of capitalism, and that my friends is what the real America is all about. Say and do whatever you want as long as it makes money. Why are depression and loneliness increasing? Because money is equated with happiness, and the economic inequality that is also expanding. I’m not a socialist, but revolutions occur when things become extreme. The “Let them eat cake” with the “Handmaids’ Tale” factions of the GOP and the SCOTUS, have brought us here and it will get worse and more violent I’m afraid.
Steve, you are a keeper of the lights that still shine, however dimly, upon our fair city upon a hill. God bless & let us know how we can help strengthen the light of truth so that it may never be extinguished. To hell with the cynics; cynicism never built anything.
In late July, Biden announced a rule to strengthen access to mental health care for about 150 million Americans. Network nightly news broadcasts are the most-watched news format in the country, garnering anywhere from 4 to 7 million viewers each night, and not a single broadcast covered the mental health news.
What possible explanation could there be for this? Does America have a suicide epidemic? A teenage suicide crisis? A veterans’ suicide crisis? A middle-aged white male suicide crisis?
Check. Check. Check. Check.
"Does America have a loneliness epidemic? A massive mental health crisis?
Check. Check.
The important thing to remember though is this: presidential actions to help real people aren’t news.
Here is another razor sharp insight from Hamby that slices through the usual platitudes and nonsense regarding what is and isn’t news. Sensationalism sells. It always has."
I am going to use this as a Discussion Question in my Abnormal Psychology class. We are discussing Mental Health and the media
It’s all exhausting, frustrating and full of nonsense. I don’t have the TV on during the day, unless there is something extraordinary happening or Sunday football. I try to read articles that make sense. My personal favorite is Deadline White House, but I have found myself tuning out after the first 30 minutes or so. Even Nicolle is running the Trump show. I get it and I don’t. A couple of weeks ago Nicolle Wallace asked the question, how do the Democrats break through the 24/7 Trump show? What should the media being doing? As I watched, my thought was, just stop it. Stop the endless experts saying the same thing over and over. Give Trump 30 minutes and then move on. Dear God it is endless. That Biden is helping multitudes of Americans and our 3rd world infrastructure is finally being fixed, should be top of the hour news. But it isn’t.
I’m typing this sitting outside, as I do every morning, watching the ducks and the 2 fat groundhogs. All far more interesting than the news.
Really good, Steve. I felt your anger and frustration come through your words. Also thanks for elevating David Pepper. There is some great work going on in Ohio, fighting against the authoritarian GOP regime there. As a neighbor, in Indiana, I hope they succeed.
“What will be most obvious is that democracy dies at noon, in the plain light of day, slowly and painfully over many long tedious years.”
Never sager words. I would go a step further and quote Hutchins:
“The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.” ---Robert Maynard Hutchins
As far as the media refusing to report on mental health and only focuses on sensationalism; I agree. Perhaps because the MSN is as mentally disturbed as Trump and his minions. We call Trump a transactional president, who only care about himself: True!
Yet, the MSN is corporate owned and they only care about ratings and profits; sounds transactional and selfish as well.
We rail on Fox for being fake news and telling their audience what they want to hear: True! Yet, the MSN decides what is best for all of us, rails when any administration fails, yet when a solution is found, they couldn’t care less, instead where stuck watching Giuliani hair dye drip down his face at the Four Seasons Landscaping. How quaint!
If America dies, it will have many fathers; and the MSN is more than complicit. That’s why having incredible independent writers, journalists and truth-sayers is more important today, more than ever and the reason I support substack....:)
Steve Schmidt, this is an important, profound, bedrock, long article. Unfortunately, long tends to be a stopper for most Americans, whose response to visually noting "long" is, "Meh! Feed me bits and bytes, and make it snappy!" I know this to be true because I dwell among them. And sometimes, I AM them. You and Charlie Sykes and a handful of others (e.g., Joyce Vance, Heather Cox Richardson, Neal Katyal) are credible, informed truth-tellers and analysts to whom more people should pay frickin' attention.
So, what we have here are: (1) journalists; (2) truth-telling analysts; (3) people-pleasing, chit-chatting entertainers featuring BREAKING NEWS!!!; and (4) Fox-whatever-the-hell-it-is. Media do bear much of the burden of the empty podium syndrome. Everyone who reads here knows that. Think OJ Simpson and the recent Don the Don convoy coverage. I suppose there's a place for that. But your phrase "democracy dies at noon, in the plain light of day, slowly and painfully over many long tedious years" is/should be an eyeball-popping waker-upper for sentient/semi-sentient human beings in the U.S.A.
Where am I going with this (pauses for breath) long blather? Not sure. But of this I am sure. This foundering country needs better access to truth-tellers. I remember watching you, Steve Schmidt, speaking from your kitchen as part of The Lincoln Project. I knew you'd make eye contact, that you'd straight-talk, that I'd laugh out loud at your occasional snarky truths, and that you weren't following the money (curse of big media).
I've over-stayed my welcome here. Signing off to do a Big Ponder.
excellent. I'm a former journalist myself and can attest to this sad state of the media. I blame the top editors more than the reporters; the top editors make the assignments, very often write the misleading clickbait headlines, and decide what goes in the lineup. As for "if it bleeds, it leads..." this has always been true of the press. A look back to the NYT a century ago displays this in full, and less lofty papers do the same thing. The mainstream media in general is one big fat lemming -jumping cliff, while the right-wing media is just one rolling conspiracy theory.
I have been so disappointed in the MSM for years now. Assume it has to do with all the DARK MONEY purchasing them. This was perfect …absolutely perfect. I particularly like the line…. How about half past never, ever.
Thank you for this excellent post. Joe Biden has done some excellent things for the American people and almost no one is covering them. The press is too busy covering the Trump whisperers. No Edward R Murrows here.
In politics , in media , in corporations the challenge is no longer recognizing the bad apples among the many good . The challenge is to find the few good apples among the rot and rotting. To find the truth among the lies.
How is it that millions and millions of Americans have lost the will? the ability ? the tools ? to even try to discern between the truth and the lies?
Spot on Steve, we need the White House press corps like we need a hole in our head, I like the suggestion “how about never”. The sewer full of lies that MSM is producing has captured the attention of a huge number of our fellow citizens, who don’t know up from down anymore, that’s a fact plain and simple. Millions of Americans vote for people who have no interest in their wellbeing, because they can’t see the forest for the trees. If you didn’t get an education, and you live in a world where education is valued, whose fault is that? The world is changing, as it always has been, the maggots base is uneducated and wants desperately to turn back the clock to what they see as a simpler time that doesn’t exist, and never did, MSM makes billions pandering to that crowd. The lunatic preacher is emblematic of that audience, clueless in the extreme.
The Veil Of Fears
Linda Sanford Wirt
Pondering political points of spears
I pose a passage of blatant fears
Foreseen darkened years gone by
A looming dooming patriot’s cry.
What then is truth if not a lie?
Cascades downstream it’s blithe reply.
Come moment of damming gather
Would I not know or rather
Would I spout the blather of lion’s mane?
Would I succumb to silence again!
Go upward opposed to the flow
Of undertow.
No!
How is it that I fear?
What cauldron stirs my courage?
Why bring up discontent?
Why talk to another of truth asunder?
Why risk peace to purchase domination?
Why commune for democracy’s nation?
Wrested from mean grip of fear
Hilt of war? The heat of sear?
Will any sacrifice suffice?
Yay tho I walk through the valley
The shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.
As so many have marched through time
Forfeiting lives as victims, soldiers, wives.
I will stand up, Seize the day.
Dispel the lies! But still…
Am I not too old for this assignment?
Too busy? Too frail?
I must talk to my neighbors
Who are equally committed
To manufactured delusion.
Will I at least have courage to
Voice my intrusion?
Too old? Too busy? Too frail
Lifting this veil of fear
So heavy, so near.
Will I? I will.
This was my question about the 23 August GOP event called a debate: will the mass appeal media and others focus on absence v any substance that occurs? Will snark and gotchas matter more for grabbing an audience (..member by .. anything) than any policy statement that I doubt and hope (this time, Lucy, don’t pull the football) occurs?
My wife, Shelagh and I and two friends just spent a stimulating week at the Chautauqua Institution, probably the first week in decades where no one turned on a television. Instead we listened to Bob Woodward, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, David Axelrod, Carl Rove (still the snake from the Garden of Eden), and a host of other bright minds. It couldn’t have been more clear that Liberals care about society and Conservatives care about themselves and America is doomed if Society does not become paramount. Gillibrand, in particular, with a history of beneficial initiatives and collaboration with others coupled with boundless energy and determination showed us how it should be. One hundred of her in the U.S. Senate and the world would be a far better place.
But we do regularly watch television and the example of Biden and Mental Health and no coverage is the story of Biden and no coverage. While in the knife fight that is U.S. politics, we need Biden’s many accomplishments to be celebrated, we should see “boring” as a compliment, somebody just doing their job. Certainly his predecessor was not boring, while being criminal, reckless, corrupt, incompetent and uncaring just for a start, one lingers for a look at a car wreck and he was a beauty.
Based on what he has done for people, Biden should have a 50 to 60 per cent approval rating and be a shoo-in for a second term. When you do things for 150 million people you are doing it for society, not just individuals, and Biden’s record rivals FDR given the hand he was dealt. So, who cares? I think Americans have been taught to put themselves ahead of their society just when it needs to be the other way around. As long as there is Fox News and its kind to stir the cauldron of hate, combined with the disastrous corrosion of the Republican Party, the American experience will be an endless string of car wrecks to distract from the compassionate, deeply beneficial actions of the Biden administration so essential to pulling America out of this morass. If they can just get passed Donald Trump, who descended the escalator to con America into the worst administration in the country’s history.
Sure, the media has had its head turned way too much in covering the Trump wreck, but it will be the media that gives thorough coverage to his undoing, especially if cameras can penetrate the courtroom. One can only hope that the more benign media can lead the way and America, like a responsible dog owner, learns how to pick up after itself.
Bravo Steve.
Just stop covering everything trump - except for his arrest, trials, convictions and incarceration That is news.. Everything else about the fat man is theatrics
Blame who you want, it’s about money. Media, whether social, print, TV etc, are looking for followers, ratings, and attention, cuz that’s where the money is. Democracy and the Constitution have gotten in the way of capitalism, and that my friends is what the real America is all about. Say and do whatever you want as long as it makes money. Why are depression and loneliness increasing? Because money is equated with happiness, and the economic inequality that is also expanding. I’m not a socialist, but revolutions occur when things become extreme. The “Let them eat cake” with the “Handmaids’ Tale” factions of the GOP and the SCOTUS, have brought us here and it will get worse and more violent I’m afraid.
Powerful ! tRump is a lunar(y) module coming apart as it crashes into the swamp it crawled out of back here on earth! Good riddance psychos
Steve, you are a keeper of the lights that still shine, however dimly, upon our fair city upon a hill. God bless & let us know how we can help strengthen the light of truth so that it may never be extinguished. To hell with the cynics; cynicism never built anything.