This election, if anything, will be a referendum on an American institution.
I ran across an interesting quote the other day. In the “New York Intelligencer,” Features Editor Charlotte Klein quoted an unnamed TV executive as saying: “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. A Trump victory means mainstream media is dead in its current form. And the question is what does it look like after.”
Welp, I thought, that seems a good enough reason for Trump to win.
This election—blissfully ending shortly (I hope)—will not be a party mandate. The American people will be voting on mean tweets versus an empty shell of a politician with zero leadership skills and empty promises.
No, more than the outcome, this election will be a referendum on American journalism.
I always knew journalism hated those on the right; however, in 2024, they threw off all subtly and openly campaigned on Harris’s behalf and covered for her empty campaign. When she did interview, they tossed softball questions which she still managed to botch.
After the two assassination attempts on Trump, they: 1) downplayed it; 2) quickly moved on, and 3) completely blamed him for the rhetoric.
If American journalism achieved anything, it was the complete shedding of self-awareness.
They have rewrote history (by ignoring Harris’s unpopularity as VP and even claiming she was never a “border czar”—a term they coined for her).
They claimed, without any evidence or that to the contrary, Trump’s assassins were Trump supporters.
They did backflips to cover up Biden’s mental decline—something well over half the country could easily see. Then, when it couldn’t be hidden anymore, they demanded he not run. Finally, they had the audacity to actually question Trump’s cognitive decline.
They fact-checked Vance about the claim of MI13 gangs taking over apartments in Colorado by saying it was only a few instances of this as though a “few instances” was somehow acceptable.
They’ve completely taken his quotes out of context by trying to lazily compare something Trump said to Hitler.
Recently, while criticizing Liz Cheney as a being a war hawk from her comfy place in D.C., asked rhetorically, how she would react when she had rifles “shooting at her.”
Journalists went apoplectic, claiming the Trump said Cheney should be assassinated. (One anchor, after making that claim, after a dramatic pause, “Let that sink in.”)
No one bit, and even many who hate Trump said that was totally out of context. Liberal comedian Bill Maher on his HBO tv show said, “I woke up today to the headline that Trump had called for a firing squad for Liz Cheney. And this is what I really don’t like about the media. No, he didn’t.”
2024 is the year the media overplayed their hand. This was a year they weren’t even trying to hide their bias.
They have become a parody of themselves. I can already tell you how they will respond Tuesday night depending on who wins. If Harris wins, they will say it’s a political mandate for change, they will build her up as the greatest potential as president, and they will proclaim elections have consequences. They will gloat.
If Trump wins, they will challenge the results, question whether there was voter fraud or not, and discuss how journalists will be rounded up into concentration camps. They might even cry.
I hope this election makes the TV exec’s prophecy come true. I hope the media will become so close to death that they will have no choice but to question their relevance, become self-aware of what they say, and make a real effort to return to the days of Walter Cronkite.
That in and of itself will be worth a Trump win.
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