The Incredible Shrinking “Legacy” News Media

[An] Associated Press/American Press Institute poll on the 2024 election found [that] only 14% of their sample expressed “a great deal of confidence in election-related information they receive from national [news] sources.”  46% have little or no confidence at all in the information they receive from national news organizations.  [More than] half of Americans, 53%, say they are extremely or very concerned that news organizations will report misinformation during the election.  It’s 83% if [one includes those that are] “somewhat concerned.” That has to hurt, since the media elites say “misinformation” is what other people offer.

Patriot Post, 5/3/24

 Gallup: Trust in media is so low that half … of Americans … indicated they believe national news organizations intend to mislead, misinform or persuade the public to adopt a particular point of view through their reporting.

Fortune magazine, 2/16/23

Biden promised, emphatically, at least six times—pre-election—that he would not pardon his son Hunter. His media lapdogs loudly resonated those boasts … claiming at the time Biden was a historic, Sir Thomas More-like figure …

Stanford University History Professor Victor Davis Hanson, 12/5/24

The media dutifully assisted the illusion that Biden was all sweetness and light.  It was a lie like nearly everything else they say.  Biden is only in a position to do all the sick & indecent things he did because of [the media’s] own indecency.

The Federalist, 12/2/24

According to a new poll by YouGov, CNN, MSNBC and New York Times [were] the most polarizing media outlets between the two parties. …  Of these, … [the] most polarizing was CNN. Whereas Democrats’ net trust in [CNN] was +55, Republicans’ was -37, marking a 92-point difference between the two[!]  [Next was] MSNBC and The New York Times, which saw a 91-point difference and an 82-point difference between Democrats and Republicans, respectively[!]

The Wrap, 5/9/23

Before the “Twitter Files” began, the position of the Democratic Party when people [would say] the U.S. government was implicitly pressuring/coercing Big Tech to censor was, “That’s a crazy conspiracy theory, not really happening.” Once the
Twitter Files provided the proof, [a] tsunami of demands that material be censored, the Democratic Party switch[ed] from “this isn’t happening” to “it’s happening and [that’s] good.” … The union of state and corporate power, the classic academic definition of fascism … To censor the internet is something [Democrats] celebrate.

Glen Greenwald, 7/6/23

The only people who get the “whistleblower” title [and the legal protections that affords] are people who advance the political interests of the US media and the Democrat Party, which is the same thing.  The media itself is an arm of the Democrat Party.  [S]ince 2015 [Trump’s first presidential run], it’s impossible to deny that.

Glen Greenwald, 10/1/22

CNN settled for an undisclosed amount with Nick Sandman, one of the Covington Catholic High School students smeared by multiple news outlets after a video of a “standoff” between the teens and a Native American activist went viral. … After multiple news outlets and media figures smeared him and his peers for allegedly “blocking” and “harassing” a Native American activist whose account of the confrontation was quickly discredited by footage of the situation, Sandmann sued CNN, The Washington Post, and NBC Universal for hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Daily Wire, 1/9/20

The Washington Post on Friday agreed to settle a monster $250 million lawsuit filed by Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann over its botched coverage of his 2019 encounter with a Native American elder.

New York Post, 7/24/20

Nicholas Sandmann reaches settlement with NBC in Covington Catholic High School controversy.  Sandmann was recorded on video wearing one of former President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign hats while smiling at the activist, Nathan Phillips, as Phillips beat a ceremonial drum and chanted at him [in his face].  Several media reports at the time claimed [without warrant that] the incident was racially charged on the part of the white teenager, …

New York Post, 12/18/20

If the 2024 presidential contest proved anything, it’s that … the public has stopped listening to mass media.  … [They] are less trusted than virtually any major institution in America.  It’s a well-earned ignominy. … There was never a reckoning for [their] Russia collusion hysteria or [their] concerted effort to censor and gaslight us on the Hunter Biden laptop story. There will be no reckoning for spending years fearmongering about the coming Nazism [and fascism], either.  Most of the media had spent four years covering up Biden’s mental and physical decay [before it was exposed during the first [Trump-Biden] presidential debate.  It was perhaps the most stage-managed presidency in history and not one reporter with access to the White House, outside of Fox News, thought it important enough to let us know [Biden] could barely function. … With every debacle, the [media] gets worse, more insufferable self-glorification, priggishness, smugness [and a] bigger unearned sense of moral superiority.  It’s exceedingly doubtful much will change.

The Washington Examiner, 11/7/24

In 2023-2024, more people in Chile, Peru, Turkey, Indonesia, Mexico, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Nigeria and Kenya trust [their own] media more than [Americans] trust [theirs].  The US media does fare a bit better than the media in Argentina and eastern European countries like Bulgaria. 

Statista.com, 2024

[T]here are plenty of reasons Trump was re-elected, but a big reason is the silence in the media [about Biden’s dementia]. It’s one of the biggest scandals of any sort in American history and certainly one of the biggest media scandals.

Journalist/Political Commentator Mark Halpern, 12/5/24

I’ve been independent ever since I left [The Intercept that] I founded when it wouldn’t let me publish negative reporting about Joe Biden before the 2020 election. [Corporate media] ratings have been in collapse and free fall.  Every poll shows that Americans trust and like corporate media almost less than pedophiles and syphilis.

Glen Greenwald, 11/29/24

[T]he press that tried to destroy Trump is itself destroyed.

Bill O’Reilly, 12/5/24

Although the Corporate “news” media attempted to destroy Trump with one lie or smear or hoax or indictment after another (most of them, with a modicum of honest research, transparently silly), they have only succeeded is destroying their own credibility.   Most people now just tune out their predictable yammering as background noise.  Unfortunately, they have helped Biden destroy much of the country and the Democrat Party as well. 

After the election, the smears are still going on, e.g., Trump still being accused, falsely (on Abby Phillip’s show), of saying he wants to use the military to “round up American citizens”).  Trump said no such thing but Phillips seems unable or uninterested in making simple distinctions.  Her reply that Trump has suggested using the military to “address domestic problems involving US citizens” is a very different claim.  In fact, several US presidents have called out the military to quell civil unrest 12 times: Anybody  Remember when in 1957 President Eisenhower called out the 101^st Airborne to desegregate Little Rock High Schools or when President Kennedy used over 120 Federal Marshalls to allow black Air Force veteran James Merdeith to attend the University of Mississippi in 1962.  Duh! 

Our “news” media, infected by “insufferable self-glorification, priggishness, smugness” and “an unearned sense of moral superiority,” appears incapable of learning.

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