For years the mainstream news media paradigm has been as disgustingly oversimplified as the nation’s inadequate two-party political system: Conservatives watch Fox and listen to Rush Limbaugh; Liberals watch MSNBC and listen to public radio.
Generalization? Yes. Inaccurate? Not really.
A couple great things happened in this election season, though, opening American news consumers’ eyes to the false choices with which they’re presented by media manipulators.
Hillary Clinton’s ability to manipulate leftist media elites was hampered by the extraordinary corruptness of her political persona. Suddenly, news outlets that fawned over Clinton while completely ignoring the damning series of leaks coming from transparency groups looked like sycophants at worst and, at best, totally incompetent.
Meanwhile, the so-called conservative media machine that is Fox News invested its energy in undermining true conservative candidates throughout the 2016 presidential primary season. Then, realizing their folly as Trump emerged as the likely nominee, they began attacking the president elect.
Unfortunately for the mainstream media, American voters have grown exceedingly tired of the products they peddle: welfare and war drums.
Clinton was the obvious MSM choice, Fox included— here’s looking at you, Megyn Kelly. The reasons were pretty simple: Clinton has the most establishment political connections, was most likely to grow American dependency on government and she likes a good war.
The media called this experience.
But despite all of the anti-Trump rhetoric and pro-Clinton polls and punditry, Americans rejected mainstream media’s message.
The right of center Media Research Center released some interesting data Tuesday that helps to illustrate why.
Via MRC:
7 in 10 (69%) voters do not believe the news media are honest and truthful.
8 in 10 (78%) of voters believe the news coverage of the presidential campaign was biased, with nearly a 3-to-1 majority believing the media were for Clinton (59%) vs. for Trump (21%).
Even 1/3 (32%) of Clinton voters believe the media were “pro-Clinton.”
8% of Trump voters said they would have voted for Clinton if they had believed what the media were saying about Trump.
97% of voters said they did not let the media’s bias influence their vote.
“There is an institutional bias at major media networks that must be repaired and I am highly skeptical that news executives are interested or capable of undertaking this responsibility,” said Brent Bozell, president of MRC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSmDkrDsWNc
And he’s right to be skeptical.
In fact, mainstream media is scrambling to regain its influence in the worst way possible: They’re mounting an assault on the alternative media sources so many disaffected American news consumers have turned to as their primary sources of information.
All of a sudden, conservative news stories on social media simply can’t be true and must be eliminated. And alternative media is a threat to the nation’s future.
Has sort of a vast right-wing conspiracy ring, doesn’t it?
But, as droves of Americans are finally realizing, the army of alternative news bloggers picking apart daily headlines, investigating political wrongs and disseminating contrarian truths— often for salaries much closer to the average American’s than anyone working for Fox— aren’t the enemies.
The enemy is the army of elitist establishment politicians and billionaires who have a direct line to the nation’s highest paid national journalists— well compensated propaganda pawns.
Trump isn’t the face of it, just a symptom— but there is a revolution brewing. The revolution is against a political and economic establishment that sold working class Americans out decades ago and has manufactured the consent (to borrow from Noam Chomsky) of the ruled ever since.
Alternative media began working against the mainstream propaganda machine decades ago—and the internet has made it easier than ever. Now, the unofficial sources can reach the same masses as the networks.
The networks and other mainstream holdouts will get increasingly desperate and eventually implode under their own weight.
This happened years ago with many newspapers in towns and cities throughout the nation as local bedroom bloggers increased their audiences and became real competitors uninhibited by the longstanding bias and internal bureaucratic attitudes which hamper many traditional papers.
Believe it or not, there was a time when reporting the news was the bluest of white-collar professions. Incidentally, the majority of people also used to trust and respect the news media. What’s happening now is nothing more than a long-overdue market correction to return that respect and the voice of the press to the populace.