How Much Do YOU Trust the Mainstream Media?

If there’s one thing 2021 showed, it’s that many people chose to detox from the mainstream media. Especially after the incendiary year that was 2020, from the pandemic to the election. Weekday consumption of network news is down across the board with almost all broadcast news program viewership down 10 – 15%. The New York Times website reported its number of unique visitors is down some 34%. The Washington Post reported a drop of 44% – almost HALF.

14 million political articles in 2020 reported an average of 924 engagements on social media. About that same amount of articles in 2021 found roughly only 321 engagements. That’s a big difference. Clearly if nothing else, the media landscape is changing.

We know firsthand that radio numbers have declined, partly to do with less people commuting for work. Yet podcast numbers are spiking. That may be because podcasts can be consumed on the listener’s time. Or it may be that audiences have lost trust in the mainstream talking heads.

The question is, how are people consuming their news media now? With new media alternatives popping up all the time such as Facebook, YouTube, and Rumble, do these declining numbers mean it’s becoming less relevant to have your content carried by the major media outlets? Or are people just tired of it? Has the news become so detrimental to everyone’s emotional and mental state that people are just tuning out?

By no means would I want to bash the media as a whole, as we are very much part of it. But there has been a palpable sense of distrust towards both sides of the media. Even The Weather Channel, which one would think might remain ubiquitous, and politically agnostic, has become politicized.

And it’s not even necessarily about if liberal media outlets or conservative media outlets are doing better or worse – they’re all down. That would seem to indicate people are over it. They want facts. They want weather. They don’t want to be preached to, or talked down to, or called something they’re not.

Will Haynes offered a very insightful take on the current media landscape and why many people might be choosing to turn it off:

If you look at what’s happened over the last 24 months is we’ve had very big stories. Probably some of the biggest stories in our lifetime. There was a global pandemic. There was a very largely watched election in the United States. You had the Afghanistan withdrawal. If you look at all these things and the way that it was reported, the way the 2020 election was reported, the way that things were reported as “truth and you better not question it” when it comes to the way that the pandemic occurred and began. It wasn’t even biased media anymore. It became activist media. And if you were not believing or you were questioning what the media narrative was, you all of a sudden were conspiracy theorist, a liar, you were evil.

It became very aggressive, the rhetoric towards people, when the entire purpose of journalism is to question the prevailing narrative. That’s the basis of it. And when all of a sudden the media landscape changes from questioning those in power, questioning authority, to if you do question, you’re some sort of whacko, out there, conspiracy theorist, then you no longer have media and journalism, you have propaganda and activism.

Another problem might be that most of the media never moved off of the 2016 presidential election. For nearly four years all they talked about was that election, until the COVID-19 pandemic hit right before the 2020 election and that forced the focus to shift. It also became grimmer, as networks had running tickers of infections and deaths, coupled with heavily biased election coverage. For many of us, it just became too emotionally taxing. As Will put it:

When you look at even the subscriptions to the New York Times and to these outlets that were opposed to President Trump, they got a big boost in revenue, in subscribers, in eyeballs, in listeners across the board, throughout the Trump Presidency. Now a lot of it was because there were media manufactured crises happening left and right all the time to keep those numbers artificially inflated. But a lot of that does go to the fact the media wasn’t allowing themselves to get out of the election cycle. What did we hear about for four years? 2016 election. They never got away from 2016. And when you couple that with the pandemic that happened last year in the middle of an election season, these stories were not typical. It wasn’t a typical news cycle. It was on red alert all the time, and now that it is coming down off of the election season throughout this year, while you still have the pandemic, there is a fatigue in that type of news.

As I said, our intent is not to attack the media or paint it as evil. We are very much a part of the media. The difference is we’re not just opinion news. We may be lumped into the category of political news talk, but we also do the work. We have an entire legal staff fighting the battles to protect your liberty, to protect the Constitution, and to make sure the truth gets out there. And that’s only possible because of the support of ACLJ members.

Today’s full Sekulow broadcast is complete with even more analysis of the current mainstream media landscape.

Watch the full broadcast below.

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