Semafor Keeps Hosting Ridiculous “Restoring Trust In Media” Events That Only Further Undermine Trust In Media

You might recall that when political news website Semafor entered the media industry on the back of $25 million in private money, they made all kinds of promises about how they were somehow going to revolutionize U.S. media. In reality most of their promises were relatively inane, and it didn’t take long before the outlet demonstrated it was primarily interested in propping up the status quo.

Case in point: one of the very first things the outlet did is start hosting “Restoring Trust In Media” annual conferences. Except each year they make it a priority to unironically validate, normalize and platform a lot of the people actively working to undermine trust in news. Like former Fox News propagandist Tucker Carlson the first year, and overt bigot Megyn Kelly last year.

Semafor keeps being criticized for not only not helping to “restore trust in media,” but for actively making the problem worse. But they keep doubling down. This year’s event, for example, is a who’s who of people that have made U.S. media immeasurably less trustworthy over the last year:

So you’ve got FCC boss Brendan Carr, an authoritarian zealot who has been wiping his ass with the First Amendment. You’ve got Mathias Dopfner, the owner of Politico whose feckless “both sides” reporting and apparent admiration of Trump has helped normalize authoritarianism. You’ve got Matt Murray, the Washington Post Editor who is helping Jeff Bezos throw the paper’s reputation in the toilet in service to Trumpism and corporate power.

You’ve also got Hamish McKenzie, the Substack co-founder who has openly coddled white supremacists and fascists for engagement cash. A few folks from Fox News, arguably the biggest and most successful right wing propaganda operation ever created. And then some representatives for Meet The Press, another stellar example of generally feckless establishment “both sides” or “view from nowhere” access journalism.

When Semafor co-founder and editor-in-chief Ben Smith has been criticized for this in the past he’s pretty consistently been strangely obtuse, insisting these are important people who need interviewing.

But none of the attendees are ever meaningfully pressed. Tucker Carlson wasn’t pressed at all at his role as propagandist. Megyn Kelly isn’t pressed for her grotesque levels of racism and race-baiting engagement clowning. Key figures at Washington Post or Politico aren’t asked serious questions about their role in normalizing authoritarianism.

The Semafor reporting and interviews that come out of these events are generally toothless. For example this piece about Brendan Carr, one of the most extreme anti-free-speech zealots to ever lead the agency (who destroys consumer protection standards in his free time), never really seriously explains why anything he’s been doing is even particularly controversial. In fact it starts like this:

“US Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr on Wednesday praised CBS under the new leadership of David Ellison and Bari Weiss.

“I think they’re doing a great job,” Carr said at Semafor’s Restoring Trust in Media event Wednesday, adding that he appreciates the network is “trying to do something different” and experimenting with new formats.”

Real hard hitting stuff there, guys.

The result is a sort of bizarre pseudo-journalistic credibility kayfabe, punctuated by conferences purportedly dedicated to a subject the hosts and attendees either don’t understand or lack the credibility to be candidly honest about.

Also please note how Semafor doesn’t think it’s important to invite literally anybody from the worker-owned independent media that’s actually trying to restore trust in U.S. journalism. Not a single independent journalist (Marisa Kabas would be a good choice) with anything interesting or useful to say about where traditional corporate media may have genuinely gone wrong over the last few years.

The great irony is that Semafor can’t be honest about eroding trust in media because that would involve criticizing consolidated corporate media and the extraction class. It would require criticizing increasingly-consolidated Republican ownership of media for propaganda purposes. It would require being honest about the fact that journalism probably shouldn’t be a traditional for-profit venture.

Being honest about any of this would upset financiers, sources, ownership, and a big swath of ad-clicking viewership. You can’t have that, so instead you get this bizarre, performative simulacrum of what integrity and meaningful introspection is supposed to look like.