A Gallup poll conducted less than a month before the election found that American’s trust in the mainstream media had fallen to an all-time low. Just 32% said they had a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of trust in the media—the lowest figure Gallup had recorded since they began conducting the poll in 1972. Just ten years ago, the same figure stood at 50%.
Even Democrats, catered to by the media, are lukewarm on the subject. Gallup found that just 51% of them had a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the media, compared to 30% of independents and 14% of Republicans—roughly the same number who supported John Kasich.
Trust in the media is in particular decline among younger people. In 2016, 26% of 18-49 year olds trusted the media, down from 43% in 2011. For the older generation (50 and over), trust only declined by six points in the same period, from 44% in 2011 to 38% in 2016.
In other words, the few people who still trust the media in America will soon be dead.
Isn’t it deliciously ironic that the children of the 1960s, that era when the young rose up against the heroic, selfless World War II generation, are now stuck in the same old jam as their grandparents? After working so hard to destroy conservative principles, they settled into a lazy complacency, foolishly believing they had won the culture war forever. Now they have to watch as their own children rise up against them in glorious rebellion, embracing the very principles they sought to destroy.
So, the children of the 70s and 80s listened to punk rock instead of Walter Cronkite? Well the children of the 2010s read 4chan and watch my live roasts of feminism instead of Anderson Cooper. Cosmic justice.
The media has no way to dig itself out of this mess. They are stuck in the biggest circle-jerk I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen some big ones. Their primary goal is no longer to convey the latest information about current events to the American public, but to demonstrate their own commitment to the politically correct worldview of their peers in the metropolitan bubble.
Most of their leading lights have lost any interest in objective news reporting, of Woodward & Bernstein style investigative journalism, of speaking truth to power. Those who do are terrified of being ostracized and go along with the virtue signaling—as a result, any good journalism they eventually come out with is ignored by an increasingly disgusted, disillusioned public.
That’s why they missed the very obvious rise of Trump.
Trump and I have many of the same supporters. If the media wanted to judge where the wind was blowing, they should have paid attention to my soaring Google rankings and those of other mischievous young libertarian and conservative artists, commentators and thinkers.
The media didn’t want to see the signs. In their worldview, Mitt Romney’s failed bid for President in 2012 proved the dominance of the new Democratic coalition of urban voters and minorities. They grew drunk on the delusion of their own unassailable power.
Not every journalist working in the mainstream media failed to see the tsunami that was about to engulf the Democrats and their allies in the media elite, but those who suspected it was coming decided keeping their heads down was the best career move. A couple examples prove they likely made the right choice.
When Huffington Post blogger David Seaman published two articles for the site breaking with the left-wing and mainstream media’s self-imposed vow of silence on Hillary Clinton’s health, retribution was swift and merciless. Not only were his two articles on the subject (“Hillary’s Health Is Superb, Aside From Seizures, Lesions, Adrenaline Pens,” and “Donald Trump Challenges Hillary Clinton To Health Records Duel”) deleted, but he was fired, locked out of his editing account, and then his entire history of articles was temporarily scrubbed from the site.
Understandably miffed, Seaman took to YouTube to express his astonishment.
“Whenever a video concerning a presidential candidate’s health is viewed more than 3.5 million times, somebody under contract to The Huffington Post should be able to link out to that, especially as a journalist living in the U.S., without having their account revoked,” said Seaman. “I’ve filed hundreds of stories over my years as a journalist and pundit and I’ve never had anything like this happen.”
Seaman was not the only example. There was also Michael Tracey, a reporter for VICE whose relentless Hillary-bashing was tolerated only during the primaries, when Tracey was a vocal supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders. Once Clinton won her victory over Sanders, Tracey’s views were suddenly unwelcome.
Nevertheless, he persisted, repeatedly highlighting the failings of Hillary Clinton on social media in the months leading up to the election. On September 6, 2016, he published one of the election cycle’s more prescient columns: “The Mainstream Media Has a Donald J. Trump-Sized Blind Spot.” Tellingly, it wasn’t published at his home turf of VICE, but at the Daily Beast.
In his column, Tracey described how the media’s tactics were backfiring.
I can’t tell you how many ordinary folks I’ve spoken with who don’t trust that the rolling Trump outrage machine otherwise known as current mainstream media is giving them the real story. This includes people who generally dislike Trump. One representative example was a restaurant worker in Philadelphia during the Democratic Convention in July who told me that she assumes anything Trump says or does will instantly be blown out of proportion, so has decided to just ignore the coverage. For her, it’s a rational reaction to such disproportionate, all-consuming furor: She says she cannot process it all and also retain her sanity. So even if a controversy arises that is legitimately worth getting up-in-arms about, she will no longer know it.122
Emphasis added is mine. Tracey was right, and the mainstream media (as well as all the National Review writers who assumed Trump would surely lose) were wrong. Not only did they fail to anticipate that Trump’s unstoppable momentum would carry him to the White House, they also likely aided the process, by crying wolf, confecting controversy and pretending to be offended and outraged so many times that the voting public simply switched off.