Left-Wing Media is Dying
Left-wing media is collapsing
And it's beautiful.
CNN is set for "hundreds" of layoffs -- including top anchors. Associated Press is laying off 8% of its global workforce. Rumors are floating that MSNBC could be sold for parts as ratings plunge 50% since the election.
So why is left-wing media collapsing?
Easy: The audience no longer trusts them.
How Media Destroyed Itself
Gallup now reports that American trust in media has fallen to just 31%. 7 in ten no longer trust them.
As recently as 2004 most Americans trusted the media. In the 1970's three-quarters trusted media, of both parties.
We just came off the mother of gaslights trying to convince the American people that Kamala is joyful and competent. While Donald Trump will literally dictator your uterus.
So expect that number to fall in Gallups’s next survey.
This matters because for decades media control of the narrative -- the gaslight industrial complex -- has so terrified conservatives that whatever backbone they once had is long gone.
From government shutdowns to spending cuts to welfare for the able-bodied or immigration amnesty, the GOP would campaign right then flip left or kiss their jobs goodbye from a vengeful media.
Those days are over.
The Secret Ingredient: Censorship
So how did it happen?
In the beginning of our Republic, newspapers were party organs — essentially weekly political ads.
By 1900 they'd grown into an oligarchy of three men: Joseph Pulitzer, a left-wing Democrat. Randolph Hearst, who started left but turned conservative. And Frank Gannett, a conservative.
As newspapers’ influence power grew, the federal government started censoring the news, with Woodrow Wilson using World War One as the excuse.
Wilson threatened Hearst with the Espionage Act and Sedition Act for politically critical articles. And he used the post office to intercept conservative newspapers — deplatforming, 1910’s style.
Wilson’s fellow authoritarian FDR did it again, censoring anti-New Deal newspapers long before the war. Then using radio and TV licenses to blackmail opponents — there was literally an Office of Censorship.
After the war ended this censorship was codified by the FCC in the so-called fairness doctrine. Which allegedly forced balanced coverage, but in reality amounted to a political kommissar.
Out of self-preservation broadcasters took the pro-government position. Meaning the Democrat position.
A seminal moment was the conservative NY Times — called the “Gray Lady” for its serious approach to journalism — raiding the newsroom of the Communist village voice in the 1960's.
1970’s: One-Party Media
By the mid-1970's, the media was a near left-wing monoculture, with Walter Cronkite then Dan Rather the tip of the spear.
And then came Ronald Reagan. Who, incidentally, got the full Trump treatment: racist, anti-gay, would start World War 3.
After winning 44 states, and armed with the first Republican Senate since 1952, Reagan finally ended the fairness doctrine in 1987. Within a year, a small time DJ in Kansas City decided to start talking about politics on the radio.
Hundreds more followed Rush Limbaugh into the breach.
From talk radio, alternative media graduated to the internet starting in 1994.
Social media -- which started in 2004 with Facebook and 2006 with Twitter -- were censorship free for the first decade. Meaning they favored the conservative media.
Of course, the Empire Struck back, purging conservatives starting in 2014 -- mid-Obama. And ramping up censorship under Trump as the establishment panicked they're losing control.
That censorship, of course, was single-handedly reversed by Elon Musk.
Bringing us to today where alt media, from X.com to Tucker and Joe Rogan to citizen journalists on the ground in North Carolina — or in the hidden-camera bars with Veritas — are wiping out legacy media.
What’s Next
Media has been called the 4th branch of government. And in many ways it's the most powerful because it shapes the voters.
The collapse of left-wing media means we're about to get a tectonic shift in American -- indeed in global -- politics towards more populism, more conservatism, and a smaller -- and more responsive government.
Every week I write a newsletter on the top stories in economics with regular deep dives into history like the Fall of Rome, the Weimar hyperinflation, or FDR’s Great Depression.
Subscribe for free, or choose $5 monthly to help keep us on the air. And thank you!
I also make daily videos on economics and freedom, posted on X/Twitter, Youtube, and Rumble.
Also check out my weekly podcast that rounds up all the week’s videos with occasional interviews of key figures in liberty.
Left-wing media might be dying but it's not so much about trust (that they are telling the truth), because the left-wingers are not interested in truth. It's about the failure of left-wing media to keep their readers in their beliefs. Left-wingers are religious zealots who fail to see reality for what it is. I feel sorry for them as there are fewer and fewer places for them to hide from the truth and reality - it is coming for them from all angles.
The rise of the citizen journalists having knee jerk credibility over the establishment media is a beautiful thing to behold indeed…glad to see it looks good on you