A note to readers...
...about my recent article on legacy media’s role in Trump's election victory.
Recently, I penned an article exploring the role of legacy media in Donald Trump's 2024 election victory, a topic that stirred considerable controversy among my readers.
While some appreciated my perspective, others responded quite negatively. I received hostile emails, some laced with profanities.
"You simply don't know what the fuck you're talking about," wrote one reader, suggesting that I'd lost my mind.
"You mention Biden's mental decline, but fail to mention Trump's clearly declining cognition or the fact that he is a liar, a rapist, and a thief who has single-handedly taken away reproductive rights from American women," wrote another outraged reader.
The backlash wasn't limited to messages; paid subscribers began cancelling their subscriptions, explicitly stating it was retribution for my article.
I endeavoured to clarify that my critique was not an endorsement of Trump or his policies, but rather an analysis of how legacy media, with its predominant left-leaning bias, has been losing credibility and public trust.
The latest Gallup poll supports this view.
My article wasn't about listing alleged offenses or comparing the deceptions of Trump versus Biden/Harris - all politicians lie.
Instead, it focused on the lies propagated by the legacy media. 'Truth-telling' should be at the core of journalism, and this is where mainstream media has failed us badly - and continues to fail.
Yes, Fox News, with its conservative lean, favoured Trump’s campaign. But the majority of mainstream media exhibits a left-wing bias, a long-held view acknowledged by high-profile journalists from The New York Times, NBC News, and CNN.
An analysis I cited showed that Kamala Harris received 78% positive coverage across ABC, NBC, and CBS, whereas Trump only received 15%, in the crucial months leading up to the election.
The consequences of this bias are evident in the shifting audience dynamics.
Major networks like CNN, MSNBC, and even Fox News are witnessing declining viewership numbers. People are increasingly turning to platforms like X for news, where they perceive there to be less censorship and bias.
This shift was dramatically highlighted post-election by CNN's announcement of massive staff layoffs due to plummeting ratings.
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, who proclaimed this year that Biden was "far better than he's ever been," watched his ratings crash after Trump's win.
When Scarborough and his co-host Mika Brzezinski met with President-elect Trump last week, their plight only worsened, with viewership dropping 43% from last year and a stark 60% drop in the key 25-54 demographic.
Similarly, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, who famously said in Mar 2021, "we now know the vaccines work well enough that the virus STOPS with every vaccinated person," has shed 41% of her viewers since the election and has reportedly taken a $5 million pay cut.
Maddow, who clearly lacks introspection, attacked Trump's pick to lead the US National Institute of Health (NIH) this week, claiming Stanford Professor Jay Bhattacharya had endorsed "herd immunity" as the best way to address the pandemic.
"It's just a fancy way of saying, 'Let's get everybody sick and see what happens. Cull the weak, cull the elderly,'" remarked Maddow, grossly misrepresenting Bhattacharya's position.
In a twist of irony, Comcast (NBC’s parent company) is now looking to spin off NBC, with Elon Musk joking on X that he might buy it and make it a “legitimate news network.”
This sentiment isn’t just confined to the US.
In my native country of Australia, Senator Alex Antic openly mocked legacy media's credibility in parliament, suggesting Trump's win could signal its "final countdown," accusing them of pushing a left-wing agenda.
Antic's words were blunt:
"No one cares about your commentary, no one cares about your worldview, and with the rise of alternative platforms, you’re wilting on the vine," declared Antic.
“Commiserations to the legacy media, you got it wrong again,” he jeered, before breaking out into Trump’s (now iconic) dance moves seen at his rallies.
Despite the backlash from readers and the flurry of cancelled subscriptions, I believe my observation about the role that legacy media played in securing a Trump victory still holds, and highlights the urgent need for it to adapt or risk further irrelevance.
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I am very sorry to hear about the negative reaction from some of your readers.
I can only assume that their comments say more about their own state of mind than the quality of your research and presentations. This is really no different to the reaction of the ABC to your exposé on statins.
To quote a favorite book of mine, "The House of God", "The patient is the one with the disease".
You can probably safely ignore all those with TDS. There's no helping them.
To further underline the disconnect legacy media have with the new world, Kim Williams comes out and disses Rogan. SMH.