by Bill Wilson
Eight years ago, President Donald J. Trump was elected after an election season riddled with false narratives that he was ‘unelectable,’ which caused a radical shift in Americans’ views of the objectivity of the press.
During and after Trump’s first term, the press continued to vilify the president to such a degree that even moderates and independents lost trust in the media’s objectivity.
For many Americans, seeing the mainstream media’s blatant bias against Trump was the impetus for them to begin looking into alternative news – and views – and scrapping their allegiance to the mainstream media and the mainstream political system.
Four years after Trump won the presidency for the first time, a slew of misinformation about the coronavirus further deteriorated public trust in the mainstream media.
Then, mid-election this year, the public learned that President Joe Biden was, in fact, not well enough to run for reelection—and, from the looks of things, hadn’t been well enough to run the country for months at minimum.
The press, it seems, had managed to keep Biden’s deteriorating health hidden from a majority of Americans until a politically opportune moment when they unveiled Biden’s successor, Kamala Harris. However, that strategy proved to be a failing one.
Eight years after entering the political scene, Trump won a sweeping victory, with the popular vote on his side for the first time for a Republican candidate in twenty years. This was despite the barrage of mainstream polls and press coverage alleging that Americans wouldn’t elect Trump twice.
Trust in the mainstream media as an objective source of truth is deeply broken. Ratings for MSNBC and CNN have plummeted in the weeks following Trump’s decisive victory on election day. MSNBC’s prime-time ratings have fallen by half compared to pre-election numbers.
American’s trust in mainstream media is at a record low, according to multiple reports. A YouGov poll released this week finds a mere eight percent of Americans strongly agree the media “generally acts in the best interests of Americans”. The poll shows Americans say by twenty-three points – 58 percent to 35 percent – the media does not generally act in the best interests of Americans.
The media is third from the bottom out of twenty-three industries Americans were asked to rank, with only the tobacco and gambling industries ranking lower. Yes, Americans think less of the news media than they do of the pharmaceutical, advertising, and social media industries.
This was far from always true. According to Gallup’s tracker of public trust in the media going back to the 1970s, public trust has eroded decade by decade. In 1976, 76 percent of Americans had a good or fair amount of trust in the media, but that is now down to just 31 percent, the lowest number on record for Gallup. The second lowest number on record for public trust in the media was 32 percent – right after Trump won the 2016 election despite the mainstream media hailstorm against him.
Trump is fighting back. On Monday, the president-elect announced his lawsuit against pollster J. Ann Selzer and The Des Moines Register, alleging that polling done by Selzer and published by the Register was intended to sway the election against Trump in Iowa.
Without the mainstream media, where will Americans turn for news? Many Americans tune out mainstream news networks and newspapers, especially when they consistently report incorrect information or are blatantly biased against alternative views.
This has led to the creation of a number of independent online journals and magazines, as well as a web of influential podcasters and commentators.
The rise of independent voices on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, X, and Truth Social alone presents a huge challenge to mainstream news networks, but their blatant disregard for the truth sealed their own fate of descending into obscurity.
Bill Wilson is the former president of Americans for Limited Government.
Cross-posted with The Daily Torchvia Conservative Firing Line