Blame the Media

Written by Mark Holmberg, Journalist

To the half of the country horrified about the outcome of the election and are now asking how it could’ve happened:

You can lay a good bit of it at the feet of our national media.

They are the ones who excused Joe Biden’s decline and hid the scope of it until it became

inescapably obvious during the June 27th presidential debate.

DC journalists like Bob Woodward of Watergate fame could and should have drilled down into his decline well before that and exposed who was covering it up and who was/is actually running the country.

A new, better candidate could have been selected - with actual voting - much earlier.

But they were all busy investigating Trump. (Woodward was finishing his latest Trump gotcha book, if you’ll recall.)

Thus begat the 11th-hour switch to Kamala Harris, without a single vote from the citizens or complaint about the process from most of the national media, many of them busily shouting about the Orangeman’s threat to democracy.

They were silent or enthusiastically cheered on Harris’ coronation despite her far-left baggage and being so unpopular a vice president these same media insiders had been privy to the discussion about replacing her on the 2024 Biden ticket.

Even an outsider like me knew she was unelectable and I begged for the Dems to find a more moderate, polished and experienced candidate, like NC governor Roy Cooper or Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, among others. (She drew some 14 million less votes than Biden did in ‘20. Thus, the landslide.)

All this manipulation and/or lack of integrity helped fuel much of the nation’s distrust and disgust with our media, which has now dropped below the nation’s regard for its least-trusted institution, Congress, as Amazon and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos pointed out in his surprisingly eloquent explanation of why The Post would not endorse Harris.

This slide was not sudden, as many of us have pointed out for decades.

But the Trump years made it so glaringly obvious it became an effective campaign strategy and vote-driver for the right:

Fake news!

Some highlights (or lowlights) of this:

The national media’s incuriosity about the Hunter Biden laptop/Ukranian influence-peddling story and allowing its portrayal as Russian disinformation during the run-up to the 2020 election.

The media cheering on Trump’s impeachment for even asking about Hunter’s enrichment when Joe Biden, as vice president, was in charge of our Ukranian policy.

The national media’s active participation in the Russian-collusion attempt to overturn the 2016 election and subsequent complacency about them being played as dupes when it all fell apart.

More recently, their casual acceptance of the two assassination attempts.

The national media firmly taking sides (instead of providing balanced and illuminating reporting) on divisive bellwether issues such as illegal border crossings, sweeping Diversity, Inclusion and Equity reforms, boys in girls’ sports, wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, “toxic masculinity” and the use of the judicial system to hamstring a political opponent.

In the end, most of the national media sat silently as Harris dodged them (not sitting for a single traditional press conference!) and running a bipolar campaign - first keeping a “joyful” low-profile and then launching a late blitzkreig attack on Trump and, by proxy, his supporters, as jackbooted Nazis.

This coddling and the pushing of our social and political pendulum too far to the left not only elected Trump in a landslide, it decisively swung the Senate and will likely deliver the House.

I know so many of you are depressed, angry, disgusted, exhausted, dizzy and, hopefully, motivated.

You can’t blame Trump and his supporters. He likely ran the most energetic, laser-focused campaign in U.S. history.

Yes, it relied in part on deceit and fear-mongering, but his messaging resonated powerfully among those who feel the country has gone too far in the wrong direction.

That includes a surprising number of young, black, Latino and female voters. (Which lets some air out of the racism and misogyny trope.)

Perhaps none of his many slings and arrows struck so accurately as his relentless shots at the “fake news” media.

As Jeff Bezos wrote:

“Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion.

“It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility (and, therefore, decline in impact), but a victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.”

I know many left-leaning friends have been angry with me over the years for harping on this.

It’s hard for you to see or complain about the bias because you agree with it. (The same can be said of the righties and Fox News.)

But you just got kicked squarely in the teeth because they no longer honor their Constitutionally protected mission.

As I’ve said before, if a doctor, hairdresser or plumber consistently got their jobs wrong - deliberately - they would lose their licenses and be sued into oblivion.

There is rarely any accountability or punishment when the media takes sides, gets the facts wrong or skews them.

We can’t keep letting this happen.

Yes, you’re hurt. In shock.

But you shouldn’t be able to turn to the national media for comfort and commiseration.

You should be able to turn to them to find out what the hell just happened.

And why.