I’ve been listening to every episode of the NYT “The Daily” podcast for years, and noticed a marked absence of pieces holding power to account during this presidency compared to the previous two. They seem “muted”. Mainly just not covering topics they would have before.
And when they do cover these sorts of “hold power to account” topics, they really refrain from bringing up facts of the matter that would make the person holding power look bad. And even when they do bring up these facts they usually find some way to spin it to soften the blow. Just my observation