The Media Sinkhole

The decline and persistent bias of the establishment media has occurred for many years now and has led to widespread and often drastic shifts in the public’s media choices.

The most prestigious media institutions of previous eras, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and major broadcast networks like NBC, ABC, CBS, and CNN, are now considered little more than propaganda organs by a large part of the public, as evidenced by public opinion polls which routinely now show approval of these outlets to be even lower than approval of Congress.

The national Democrat Party, as has been frequently noted in recent months, has not yet made any substantive strategic recovery from its disaster in the 2024 national elections, and continues to drift further to the left by identifying and supporting events and issues that most voters oppose, including the violent anti-ICE riots and gender controversies.

As the mouthpiece and reinforcer of unpopular Democrats and their radical issues, the establishment media once again abetted the party’s 2024 campaign, and was clearly complicit in its failure. Establishment editors and journalists apparently thought their biased reporting was helping Democrats keep the White House and defeat Donald Trump.

Their efforts were intended to shield their readers and audiences from President Biden’s personal decline and from the general public’s growing alarm from the influx of illegal aliens pouring into the U.S., primarily across the southern border with Mexico. The media further abetted the Democrats’ woke left wing culture that was clearly opposed by not only most Republicans and independents, but also by many minority voters who traditionally voted for Democrats.

Thus, by the time the 2024 presidential campaign was in full swing, most Democrats were unprepared for President Biden’s disastrous debate performance and had little time to hold an open nomination race to replace him.

Alternative and “new” media voices, on the other hand, had exposed Biden’s rather obvious physical and mental decline, and had given voice to the increasing alarm of the general public about the border crisis and the administration’s preoccupation with unpopular domestic cultural issues.

The key development in 2024, and even more so now going forward, is that the “alternative media” reached and is still reaching more voters than the so-called “establishment media” — via some print newspapers and magazines, but most importantly through social media and the internet, podcasts, cable TV, and radio.

In the contemporary political environment, most voters, including conservatives, liberals, and independents, generally read or watch the news in the media they agree with politically. Of course, both the media on the left and on the right are partisan, but in the 2024 campaign, the establishment media produced an essentially false political reality to its readership and audience. It was a media sinkhole.

Donald Trump was portrayed as a has-been, a criminal, and the voice of extremism — images deliberately orchestrated by two failed impeachments, four controversial prosecutions, trials, and convictions, and the constant ridicule by Democrat politicians and commentators.

The establishment media willingly and enthusiastically repeated and magnified this portrayal.

The Democrats are in the political business and are supposed to be partisan against their opposition. Although they currently are in the throes of their 2024 defeat, eventually they will recover, whether it be in 2028 or 2032 — history says that sooner or later they will once again win national elections.

But the media, including the establishment media, is in the communications business. Political parties depend on attracting votes, but the media depend on attracting readers and audiences.

The print media is not yet disappearing, but it is becoming smaller and smaller. Network TV and cable TV are drawing fewer audiences. The numbers are even worse for the establishment media, which by its own choice presents an almost entirely partisan take on the news. The published ratings numbers show increasingly they are ignoring many of those whom they depend on for their very existence.

Would the outcome of the 2024 national election have been different if the establishment media had only done their traditional job of presenting the news fairly?

Perhaps. But perhaps not. Kamala Harris-Tim Walz was one of the weakest presidential tickets of either party in modern U.S. political history. It is probably fair to say that if Democrats had been allowed to have a true and full campaign for their presidential ticket, their ballot would have had different names on it in November.

In any event, the ghosts of 2024 will continue to haunt the Democrats, and especially the establishment media. While Democrats can find new leaders and recover, the media may not find it so easy to restore its lost credibility.

Herald Boas is an AMAC Newsline contributor.