Media coverage of the train derailment and toxic chemical spill in East Palestine, Ohio, has reached the point where the stories are not about the derailment itself but about the circus of political figures stopping by to show that they care and/or make political points. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg visited, under pressure from the right-wing media, despite the rarity of a transportation secretary visiting the site of a non-fatal train derailment. Donald Trump showed up to distribute Trump-branded bottles of water that we have to hope hadn’t been sitting around since Trump’s water brand folded in 2010.
The New York Times had to be stoked for this moment after its years of coverage of Trump supporters in Ohio diners. Suddenly that obsession is related to real news—what a win for the newspaper! (Donald Trump got 72% of the vote in Columbiana County, Ohio, in 2020.) And sure enough, the Times delivers in true Times-political-coverage fashion. To give you a measure of how bad the Times take on the ways political figures are trying to leverage the derailment to their advantage is, Politico has a better article on the subject. Once upon a time, The New York Times would have been ashamed to be outdone by the likes of Politico.
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Then again, it’s entirely possible that the editors and writers of the Times believe that their coverage is good for the exact same reasons it is bad. Politico is up front about covering the circus aspects—the politicians and news producers showing up for long enough to do a little pandering or get a couple quotes, and the ways residents are either rolling their eyes or jumping for their moment in the spotlight. It’s slight but doesn’t actively insult the intelligence of its readers.
The Times reaches for more, following its tried-and-true formula of an opening that skews toward Republicans while engaging in some both-sidesism, followed—far enough into the article that only dedicated readers will have gotten there—by some pretty damning stuff about Republicans.
Oh, and the Jonathan Weissman-written piece is as self-important as the Times could wish. Here’s the opener:
To Democrats, the train derailment and chemical leak in the hamlet of East Palestine, Ohio, is a story of logic, action and consequences: Rail safety regulations put in place by the Obama administration were intended to prevent just such accidents. The Trump administration gutted them.
To Republicans, East Palestine is a symbol of something far larger and more emotional: a forgotten town in a conservative state, like so many others in Middle America, struggling for survival against an uncaring mega-corporation and an unseeing government whose concerns have never included the likes of a town of 4,718 souls.
Where to begin. The gutting of rail safety regulations is not just a logical story. Anytime safety regulations are gutted, people’s lives are on the line—workers, locals who breathe the air and drink the water. “Republicans put corporate profits over life-saving regulations” is an emotional story. (It’s not clear that the specific train braking system regulation that is most often cited as having been gutted by Trump would have made a difference here, but it’s part of a much larger story of Republican opposition to efforts to improve safety because they consistently put corporate profit over regular people’s lives.)
On the other hand, there’s the “forgotten town in a conservative state, like so many others in Middle America, struggling for survival against an uncaring mega-corporation and an unseeing government.” A government that tries to put in rules to make trains safer is not an unseeing government. We have a government that Republicans have done their best to break, but—just a though—maybe reporters for the newspaper of record should not take the outcome of Republican efforts to break the government as a validated part of the Republican narrative.
Also, too, “struggling for survival against an uncaring mega-corporation.” Exactly the kind of uncaring mega-corporation Republicans have given power to over decades, from protecting them from safety rules to slashing their taxes. Not for nothing, the $98,000 Norfolk Southern has given to Ohio politicians over the past six years was “virtually all” to Republicans, local news 6 On Your Side reported, and the company filed more than 200 reports on its lobbying in the state. Much of that lobbying was aimed at defeating bills intended to make freight rail safer.
I get what Jonathan Weissman probably thinks he’s doing: offering up the story being told by each party about what’s going on here, and doing so in a way that conveys the old stereotypes about Democrats appealing to facts and Republicans appealing to emotions. But he does it badly, and self-importantly, and also … that kind of reporting is past its expiration date.
“In some sense, both sides are right, both sides are wrong and, in the bifurcated politics of this American moment, none of the arguments much matter,” he writes, a few paragraphs later. Why is that? It’s a question partly answered by the conspiracy theories about the derailment he details quite a few paragraphs later. Go figure, those conspiracy theories are being pushed by Republicans like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Donald Trump.
It’s a vapid analysis that gestures toward some of what’s really going on without going beyond the surface of this story, let alone being willing to name the broader political forces at play. And it’s completely par for The New York Times course.
This is a serious event that deserves serious action by the government—which is making Norfolk Southern pay for the cleanup process—and a lot of investigation into how it happened, from how the specific wheel bearing came to overheat to the deeper roots of how the freight rail industry has increased profits by keeping its costs down too far. The physical complaints of people in East Palestine deserve more than the government telling them the air and water are safe even if the air smells and fish were only recently dying in local streams and expecting those assurances to put an end to the worries. It’s possible that a lot of what people are experiencing physically is related to the stress and fear they’ve had to deal with, but they deserve to be taken seriously. And it’s true that there are real political aspects to this—undoubtedly so—but “Republicans are blaming Democrats because of the vibe” and “Democrats want to talk about safety regulations” are not two sides of the same coin and shouldn’t be treated as such.
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