The 2024 U.S. national election campaign is now entering its home stretch. As the establishment media labors full bore to defeat Donald Trump and prevent the Republican Party from regaining control of the U.S. Senate and keeping its control of the U.S. House, many conservatives, as well as their opponents on the left, underestimate the influence of the “other media” — the media which strives to present a balanced and fair reporting of the news or at least a credible antidote to the so-called fake news and distortions of events and issues being promoted on the left.
This underestimation and lack of appreciation of the other media has consequences, most notably a widespread pessimism and floating anxieties that Republican, conservative and even independent candidates and their issues can’t reach voters on an even political playing field.
That’s true, of course, if the establishment media is considered the only playing field, which it is not. Despite their own self-congratulating attitude, the players of the establishment media now communicate to dramatically shrinking audiences of print, broadcast, and social media consumers.
It has been many years, in fact, since the New York Times, Washington Post, most of the major TV networks, public radio, and hyper-partisan leftist commentators were read or listened to seriously by anyone but a progressive left audience, much of it located primarily in several large urban centers.
Years ago, these establishment media venues did have good reputations for the quality and fairness of their news reporting, and it is these old and abandoned reputations which intimidate some conservatives.
The very nature of news reporting, of course, has rapidly changed in recent years. Much of this change took place in the hasty decline of print media, including newspapers and magazines, the historic and sudden rise of the internet and social media, and the displacement of network news by cable and video streaming sites.
The late conservative broadcaster Rush Limbaugh had with his radio and TV shows the largest audience in the nation — estimated at 30 million. He marked an inflection point, as conservatives and independents increasingly turned away from the leftist activist media.
Today, there are numerous voices, including Newt Gingrich, Thomas Sowell, Michael Barone, Victor Davis Hanson, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, David Horowitz, Laura Ingraham, Hugh Hewitt, Bill O’Reilly, Megyn Kelly, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, Steven Hayward, Christopher Rufo, and many other conservative thinkers, writers, and speakers who present outstanding ideas as well as effective critiques of the left and radical policies. They reach tens of millions of voters every day through their columns and op eds, books, broadcasts, blogs, and social media. They increasingly dwarf the readership and audiences of their counterparts on the left.
In addition to other media individuals, there are excellent large institutions which present venues for non-partisan or opposing views such as Ballotpedia, a strictly non-partisan vast online website that covers virtually every election — local, state and federal — in the nation, plus commentary on the courts and ballot issues. Real Clear Politics offers daily the best articles published elsewhere on both sides of political and public policy issues, as well as their own investigative commentary to millions of its readers online.
Numerous local, regional and national conservative think tanks and organizations (including AMAC) offer frequent forums, programs and publications to stimulate new ideas and interest in conservative and independent thinking.
Through the above, more than half of American voters were not at all surprised when President Joe Biden stepped away from re-election after his disastrous debate with former President Trump. They had read or seen the evidence of his decline daily through the other media. The establishment media had routinely covered up this decline to its print and broadcast audiences.
It is no surprise then that the credibility of the establishment media is so low in every public opinion poll. It is likely that the establishment media’s current campaign of hype, cover-up and deception about Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will fail to succeed with any but the hard-core radical base of Democrat voters.
Already, the other media is exposing the radical records and beliefs of Harris and Walz. An astonishing trail of misrepresentations, false claims, and radical actions by Tim Walz is coming out every day in the other media. But not a word about any of it in the establishment media trying so hard to defeat Donald Trump and J.D. Vance.
The two remaining months of political combat, candidate debates, and campaign ads is a long time and too open a playing field to suppress those kinds of political secrets from coming out into plain view.
Herald Boas is a writer for AMAC Newsline.
