I told you Kanye West isn’t running for President
Last night the New Yorker reported that one of Kayne West’s own political consultants was acknowledging that Kanye was “out” of the race for President. This morning even Fox News admitted that Kanye has ended his campaign. Here’s the thing: there never was a campaign. Kanye never was running. And I told you so.
When Kanye West posted a tweet several days ago insisting that he was running for President, it seemed pretty clear to us that it wasn’t anything serious. He didn’t appear to be backing up his tweet with anything real. It was already past the filing deadlines to get on the ballot in several states, and even if had launched a serious operation, he likely wouldn’t have been able to pull it together in time for a bunch of other state filing deadlines. Besides, Kanye’s behavior in public hasn’t exactly been stable over the past couple years – and he has an album to promote.
Even though it seemed obvious that Kanye’s tweet was best ignored unless he could provide evidence that he was actually running, most of the mainstream media treated the tweet as if it were some kind of official entry into the 2020 race. We saw pundit after article after pundit insisting that Kanye was going to pick off enough votes to magically hand the election to Donald Trump. There was no math or evidence involved in any of these articles, but they sure did go viral and scare a lot of people.
So how could nearly the entire media have been so wrong about this? The answer is simple: it was a ratings friendly story. Kanye West claimed he was running for President, which gave the media an excuse to go to town with it. Media outlets gave each other cover on this ridiculous narrative by all treating it like it was real. And because it was a phony but scary narrative, if someone like me spoke up and factually explained why it wasn’t real, all the other pundits had to do was say that I wasn’t taking the Kanye threat seriously enough. Now that the media is admitting Kanye isn’t really running, everyone is so relieved, they don’t bother to scrutinize where this scary false narrative came from to begin with. Rinse. Repeat.
It’s important for you as a consumer of political news to understand why it’s so often the case that nearly every major news outlet ends up running with the same narrative, and that narrative so often turns out to be false. It’s not “fake news,” as Trump so often insists. It’s just that it’s all about ratings. This false narrative about Kanye gave the media a full week of high ratings and easy page views – and the media will pay no reputational price for having pushed what they knew was an illegitimate storyline.
Of course the reason you read Palmer Report is that you’ve already figured out the media works this way, and you’re looking for someone to help you cut through it all. Keep in mind that when everyone else in the media says one thing and I say the opposite, and I’m proven correct, it’s not because I have some crystal ball. It’s simply because I refused to participate in a ratings-friendly false narrative.
