AMAC Exclusive – By Andrew Abbott
While mass layoffs at Big Tech companies have grabbed headlines in recent months, many mainstream media outlets have also announced sweeping job cuts and other cost-saving measures. Although some analysts have argued this is the natural result of an industry that has been in decline for years, the blatant left-wing advocacy of the struggling outlets – as well as the simultaneous success of other outlets that have not become mere mouthpieces for the Democratic Party – suggests that the radical tilt of most newsrooms has also played a significant role in the downfall of the legacy media.
Late last month, The Washington Post became the latest outlet to announce imminent layoffs, revealing that it intended to cut 30 positions. With a newsroom staff of only 1,000, even this modest number of cuts represents a significant scaling back for the paper. The Post has seen its readership decline precipitously in recent years following an initial spike in subscriptions when Amazon founder Jeff Bezos purchased the paper in 2013. According to insiders at the Post, the papernow has fewer than 3 million paying digital subscribers and ad revenue has taken a sharp dip.
Notably, readership began to lag during the Trump years as the paper became one of the most outspoken critics of the president. The Post was a prominent proponent of the debunked “Russian collusion” hoax, an embarrassment that undoubtedly led many readers to question both the integrity and trustworthiness of the paper.
The Post was also one of the leading voices in denying the authenticity of the Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the 2020 election, and was later forced to admit that their coverage was incorrect and the laptop was indeed real. Still, however, the Post refused to apologize or accept any responsibility for peddling a false narrative that clearly influenced the outcome of the election, again likely undermining their credibility in the eyes of the public.
Other outlets have also seen significant cuts recently. The content giant Vox Media, which owns Vox, The Verge, and the once-prestigious New York Magazine, announced last month that it was cutting 7% of its staff. NBC News and MSNBC laid off about 75 staffers across divisions toward the end of 2022. NPR has also said it will need to cut at least $10 million in spending and impose “a total hiring freeze,” even as there are 137 job vacancies at the company.
Arguably the largest and most high-profile staff layoffs occurred at CNN, which became completely consumed by anti-Trump vitriol beginning in 2016. As of January, the outlet had laid off more than 4,000 employees and shuttered many of its services. A large portion of these layoffs came from the ill-fated CNN+, a streaming service that lasted less than a month due to a complete lack of public interest.
While all of these outlets have been biased toward the political left for decades, they have taken a decidedly extreme turn in recent years, roughly coinciding with the election of President Trump. Hosts like MSNBC’s Joy Reid and CNN’s Don Lemon routinely slander conservatives as “dumb” and “racist,” and have variously argued in favor of defunding the police, packing the Supreme Court, and calling white people “the biggest terror threat in this country” – hardly positions that resonate with most Americans. Unsurprisingly, viewership for those networks has tanked.
Meanwhile, conservative outlets have seen their readership and viewership numbers increase. Fox News is currently number one across almost all ratings and metrics. Fox’s new late-night show Gutfeld! has surpassed traditional programs like CBS’s The Late Show and NBC’s The Tonight Show and is currently the “king” of late-night television. Television network Newsmax, with significantly fewer resources than mainstream media outlets, has also seen steady growth, even beating Fox News during certain events.
As outlets like CNN are undergoing dramatic staff reductions, other outlets such as The Daily Wire, co-founded by conservative writer and thinker Ben Shapiro, are aggressively expanding. In addition to a slate of popular podcasts and news content, The Daily Wire has also launched a streaming service with full-length feature films, and has announced a $100 million investment in children’s content to battle the wokeness now being infused into youth programming by companies like Disney. While Disney is hemorrhaging subscribers to its Disney+ streaming platform, The Daily Wire said that its own streaming service experienced significant growth last year, crossing 1 million subscribers.
The relative success of conservative outlets even as liberal outlets struggle to stay afloat casts serious doubt on the narrative that staff reductions and revenue declines at traditional media powers are simply the result of a “shifting industry environment.” Instead, it reflects a clear lack of public trust in those outlets that have shamelessly embraced left-wing politics while professing neutrality in their reporting.
Given the media establishment’s continuing descent into left-wing radicalism, this likely won’t be the last round of layoffs we see.
Andrew Abbott is the pen name of a writer and public affairs consultant with over a decade of experience in DC at the intersection of politics and culture.
