Battenfeld: Mainstream media has hit rock bottom in 2024 election
The 2024 election marks the collapse of the mainstream media as we know it.
Major news organizations have hit rock bottom, losing viewers and exposed as breeding grounds for liberal activists posing as reporters – losing credibility by the day.
A new Gallup poll shows trust in the media has reached a low point, even lower than Congress. Less than a third of Americans express a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the media to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly.”
More Americans – 36% – have no trust in the media, and another 33% say they don’t have very much confidence.
That’s more than two thirds of America that has lost faith in the mainstream media. It’s appalling.
You want to talk about a threat to democracy? The fact that the media has become a sellout is the real danger.
“Something we are doing is clearly not working,” Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos wrote.
In fact among a list of 10 civic and political institutions in this country, the media rank the lowest of all in trust.
Just 12% of Republicans have a great deal or fair amount of trust in traditional media, while just 27% of independents do. And more and more young people are rejecting the media as not trustworthy.
It’s not surprising that Republicans have no belief in the media, given the growing liberal bias that has infiltrated so many newspapers and TV stations.
The mainstream media complain about Donald Trump calling them “the enemy of the state,” then they go ahead and validate that by their lopsided coverage of the presidential race and politics.
A new analysis by the conservative Media Research Center found that 85% of the TV news coverage of Trump has been negative, while a whopping 78% of the coverage of Kamala Harris was positive. This is the biggest spread yet in decades of analysis by the Research Center.
In fact it’s remarkable that Trump has closed in on Harris in the polls and the race is now too close to call.
MSNBC ran footage of a Hitler rally during a Trump event. And when the mother of a woman killed by a migrant held a press conference, CNN cut away to a panel discussion led by anti-Trumper Jim Acosta.
There is a disappearing line now between the editorial side of the media and news side. It’s pretty much gone.
It’s why when Bezos killed an endorsement of Kamala Harris, reporters and editors all around the country were apoplectic. Some resigned. Why would reporters even care about the editorials? They are supposed to be objective.
The bias is partly why many voters are turning to podcasts, YouTube and social media to get their news, bypassing the traditional media outlets. Even the candidates themselves are doing it.