The events of recent months suggest that the mass media has had its humpty-dumpty moment and that America is well on its way to a time when not a single news media outlet has the respect of a majority of Americans.
A September 2020 Gallup poll showed only 10% of Republicans and 36% of independents have a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of trust in the mass media. The same poll showed 27% of Democrats had “not very much” or no trust in the mass media. Overall, 60% of Americans were skeptical or contemptuous of the mass media.
This isn’t fair to the many journalists who are earnest straight-shooters. But on the right, few if any Republicans were surprised by the recent admission by The Washington Post that its huge Jan. 9 scoop about then-President Donald Trump’s attempts to interfere in Georgia’s vote count included two falsehoods – that, despite the Post’s use of iron-clad quotation marks, Trump did not tell a top election official to “find the fraud,” and he did not say she would be “a national hero” if she did so.
These Republicans can quickly recount mass media horror stories, but on the left, the mass media face a much different reason to worry. Many Democrats – including some journalists – no longer want journalists to be earnest straight-shooters.
In the old days, the leftist critique of the mass media was encapsulated in “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media,” the 1988 book by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. It argued that the media enforce a pro-corporate, “neoliberal” worldview that accepts an American status quo that is far too complacent about vast societal inequities.