Done

Since the very early days of this blog in 2006, I have written about the increasingly egregious failings of the mainstream media. The media has always trended Left, but during the 20th century, they at least made a pretense of objectivity and tried to eliminate the most obvious bias from their reporting. 

Sure, whether it was 60 Minutes, CBS News or the New York Times, the media always favored Democrats and always had an edge when reporting on more conservative politicians, but they rarely published fake news; they rarely omitted information that was crucial to the understanding of a story, they rarely promoted stories that they knew to be fabricated and untrue, they rarely edited the words of opposing voices to distort or change their meaning, they almost always tried to vet anonymous tips before publishing them, and they had a loose but still recognizable code of ethics.

As the 21st century dawned, the media was at its zenith. Multiple all-day news channels became dominant and newspapers still held sway. However, a new generation of journalism majors, trained in advocacy journalism, began to rise beyond internships, and things began to change. At the same time, major media sources became ever more convinced of their importance and influence. They were THE information source—until they weren't.

With the election of Barack Obama in 2008, the media truly believed that it was a king maker in American politics. Obama was their guy, and for eight years they worked tirelessly to denigrate Obama's critics, protect him and his administration from their collective failures, hide his administration's many serious scandals, and de-emphasize their many bad decisions. And they largely succeeded.

But at the same time the Internet and social media arose. Dissenting voices, first few at low volume, but ultimately many and loud, began to offer a counterpoint to the mainstream media. As this occurred the mainstream media reacted by becoming more and more biased, dishonest and doctrinaire. They deeply resented having that bias and dishonesty called out, and once solid journalists (e.g., Chris Wallace or Jake Tapper) became defensive when confronted with the outright lies and distortions that were too often a hallmark of their 'profession.'

As 2016 dawned the media decided to become queen-maker once again. First, they pushed Donald Trump to the forefront of GOP candidates, thinking his bombast would make him easy prey for their candidate, Hillary Clinton. Then, once he gained the GOP nomination, they did everything possible to paint Trump as a racist and a misogynist. Story after story characterized him a "unhinged" or "unstable." They reported poll after poll that had him losing to Hillary—big. 

Except he didn't, and the media had to confront the simple reality that they had much less influence than they thought.This infuriated them, and they began a four year effort to take Trump down. There was no subtlety in this—their masks were off. They became Democratic operatives (I call them "trained hamsters) whose sole mission was to bring down the Trump presidency. At last count, 90 percent of all mainstream news stories published about Trump have been negative, despite the best economy in a lifetime, historic opportunity for minorities, a reductin in income inequality, and relative stability internationally.

In just over three years, we had an uncountable number of media stories that we outright lies. Stories that promoted fake news (e.g., the Russian Colluson Hoax); stories that omitted or spun crucial evidence with the intent of destroying reputations and lives (e.g., The Kavanaugh Hearing); stories that advocated for the Democrats (e.g., The Impeachment Travesty); stories that tried to frighten the public (e.g., the COVID-19 debacle) in a covert and then comically overt attempt to harm Trump, and stories that tried to sow racial division (e.g., the George Floyd story) in yet another attempt to derail Trump. 

Through all of this, the media has been dishonest, irresponsible, and unethical. In some cases, the trained hamsters have walked on a knife edge of criminality (screaming fire in a crowded theater), relying on the first amendment rights to protect them from their villainy. And when caught—when they are confronted with their lies and distortions—they claim it was all just an "honest mistake." What despicable cowards!

The media has become discredited, untrustworthy propagandists—no better that the media arms of the old Soviet Union or the Chinese Communist Party.

They have squandered their position of trust by becoming partisan hacks who lie or distort in order to advocate for their political party of choice.

The mainstream media is ... done.