We ask ourselves the same question every time a new poll reveals the latest "all-time low" in legacy media trust: Does the mainstream media matter anymore?
But this time, after the media eagerly worked with the Biden White House to hide lame-duck President Joe Biden's cognitive decline for four years, worked feverishly for eight years to destroy President-elect Donald Trump, lied themselves silly in their vain attempt to carry Vice President Kamala Harris, the ultimate fraud, to an election win, supported Biden's illegal alien invasion, and perhaps most importantly, as the influence of alternative (new) media has continued to grow, we can finally say it:
The Mainstream Media No Longer Matters
The legacy media (CBS, NBC, ABC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, et al.) have long fancied themselves as a monolithic force, self-created to hold the powerful accountable.
How'd that all work out? The thing is, the media can't even hold themselves accountable.
Worse yet, they have no interest in holding themselves accountable to standards that the decent among us are expected to follow. They instead deflect, obfuscate, lie with impunity, play professional whataboutism, and suppress or outright censor news and opinions that run counter to their — and the Democrat Party's — various narratives.
Biden was just fine, the media told us, ad nauseam. Kamala Harris ran a flawless presidential campaign, they said. And Donald Trump is Adolf Hitler reincarnated, his followers are akin to Nazis, and Trump's "enemies" will be rounded up by the U.S. military and tossed into internment camps, they warned. Just one problem: Every one of those statements was and remains a blatant lie, and finally, a growing majority of the American public has had enough.
As I suggested at the top, Americans’ trust in the mainstream media reached an all-time low in 2024, with only 31 percent of the public saying they have a “great deal” — or even a “fair amount” — of trust in the very media outlets that have brought us the news for decades; the outlets we grew up trusting. That ship sailed long ago.
Unshockingly, according to Gallup, the media is the least-trusted of 10 civic and political institutions, behind even Congress, which perennially lies at the bottom of the barrel.
I'll just leave this here. pic.twitter.com/UTmCLGxenC
— MikesRight (@RealLibSmacker) January 3, 2025
Let's take a walk down Media Memory Lane, shall we?
Since Donald Trump first won the presidency in 2016, and even more insistently since his loss in 2020 and the events of January 6, 2021, the media have made it their foremost duty to detail every one of Trump’s real and perceived sins. They view him as a unique threat and see themselves as democracy’s protectors, even though they began this crusade by compromising whatever moral standing they had enjoyed—namely with their assertion that Trump was an agent of Russia.
When Trump ran for reelection against Joe Biden, media outlets and social-media platforms were happy to aid the Democratic candidate by censoring and suppressing the contents of compromising material on a laptop owned by Biden’s son, Hunter—claiming, falsely, that the machine and/or its contents had somehow been manufactured by Russia.
Once Trump lost to Biden, the press eagerly and with partisan zeal cheerleaded for the lawfare waged by the Biden administration and other Democrats against Trump, which led to the FBI raid of his home in Florida, years of legal proceedings, and, eventually, a felony conviction in New York at the hands of a highly partisan district attorney.
At the same time, this industry ... was either ignoring or putting a positive spin on the failings of President Biden and his administration. The disastrous withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan was sent down the memory hole a mere week after it happened. Persistent inflation and slow job growth were excused away as transitory or really not that bad, all things considered.
The unsecured southern border received a tiny fraction of the coverage that was allotted to Trump’s controversies there. Executive orders that eliminated protections for women and girls in sports by allowing men to compete on women’s teams were either outright celebrated or dismissed as a matter affecting a tiny number of people.
And most remarkable, the clear physical and cognitive decline of the commander in chief was a topic seemingly deemed too unpleasant to cover.
The list is never-ending, and although the mainstream media isn't quite dead, it's on life support — yet struggling to continue the biased reporting and commentary for which it is infamous.
The Alternative Media
As RedState reported on New Year's Day, incoming Trump White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt suggested that press credentials to soon-to-be President Trump's briefing room could be distributed to not only the mainstream media but also to members of the alternative media — or "new media" — such as podcasters, public influencers, and other non-mainstream outlets. Clearly, other than Fox News, it has been the alternative media that has attempted to hold the powerful accountable for the four years of the disastrous Biden administration.
As Leavitt told fill-in Fox host Kellyanne Conway:
As for the press briefing room, we are certainly exploring ways on how to make sure that room reflects the media habits of the American people in 2024, not in the 1980s. If this election proved anything, it proved that the American people are no longer listening to the mainstream bias, anti-Trump legacy media.
In fact, the ratings of many networks, not this one, but some others, are in the tank, and Americans are consuming their news from podcasters, social influencers, and yes, TikTok, as President Trump so exceptionally used on the campaign trail.
And that he did. While Kamala Harris desperately hid from media, finally and reluctantly participating in pre-scripted interviews and town halls, Donald Trump was seemingly everywhere — even sitting for an unprecedented three-hour interview with Joe Rogan, "America's podcaster."
READ MORE:
Incoming Trump PressSec Has Some Bad News for Mainstream Media Journalists Hoping to Get Access
Legacy Media 'Scared' and 'Fearful' of Second Trump Term, Whine That They're Victims
As an anonymous TV executive told New York Magazine:
If half the country has decided that Trump is qualified to be president, that means they’re not reading any of this media, and we’ve lost this audience completely. Trump victory means mainstream media is dead in its current form. And the question is what does it look like after.
While the mainstream media might not be technically "dead" in its present form, it soon will be if it doesn't change its hopelessly biased ways. And like any other major problem, a company (individual, or any entity) must first not only admit that it has a problem before it can change; it must also want to change — and that might be the hardest part of all for the likes of CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, and MSNBC.
Meanwhile, the band plays on.
