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2025-01-03 09:30:44 UTC
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Permalink: Wire host Georgia Howe and Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham
: on a New Year's Day edition of Morning Wire.
2024 saw Americans' trust in the legacy media sink to all-time lows,
contributing to massive layoffs and loss of audience among some of the
biggest news outlets. These were the media's failures over the last year that
likely played a role in this lack of trust.
GEORGIA: Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham joins us now to look back
at the year's biggest media fails that are contributing to the public's
record-low trust. But Megan, before we get to that, can you give us a quick
overview of where the industry stands now? Along with a lot of controversies
and corrections, there was also a lot of contraction for an election year
when you typically see news departments expanding.
MEGAN: Yeah, the media landscape looks bad. Really bad. If you remember,
Georgia, right before the start of the year we saw substantial layoffs at The
Washington Post, The New York Times, and NPR. And as you said, that's not
what you expect to see heading into a major campaign year, when media
revenues tend to increase.
Then in January, the Los Angeles Times cut more than 20% of its newsroom.
Time Magazine cut 15%. And that bad news just continued throughout 2024. In
the summer, CNN laid off 100 people. And they're now reportedly planning to
lay off hundreds more. Comcast may sell MSNBC.
And neither of those developments is surprising when you look at some of the
cable news ratings. They're a dumpster fire. According to Nielsen data, MSNBC
is still down by more than half of what it was averaging up to election
night, and CNN is down by slightly less than half, though it didn't have as
far to fall because it was already at the bottom of the pack.
Fox News ratings are way up this year. They're now beating the ratings of the
other cable news outlets combined, suggesting a lot of former CNN and MSNBC
viewers are flocking there.
GEORGIA: Well let's talk about some of the coverage that's likely driving a
lot of the legacy media's poor performance. When you look back over the year,
what are the biggest standouts to you?
MEGAN: For me, the biggest one wasn't an issue where there was clear
deception or inaccuracy, but just appallingly callous coverage of the most
momentous moment of the campaign. And that was the response to the attempt on
President-elect Donald Trump's life at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on
July 13th.
That very same night, ABC viewers heard George Stephanopoulos and Martha
Raddatz, in part, blaming the victim.
These mainstream media hacks are SICK. They're already blaming Trump
for someone trying to assassinate him.
Stephanopolous: "President Trump and his supporters have contributed
to this violent rhetoric as well"
Raddatz: "Don't forget January 6th!"
pic.twitter.com/FroBTzDAqc
- Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) July 14, 2024
And then on the print front, the day after Butler, The Atlantic ran a piece
that said that the "bloodshed Trump has done so much to incite against others
has touched him as well."
In September when there was a second assassination attempt at Trump's golf
course, you heard similar rhetoric from major media. Almost immediately after
news of that second assassination attempt broke, MSNBC anchor Alex Witt asked
political analyst Elise Jordan this:
During the first attempt on @realDonaldTrump's life, CNN and the
Atlantic blamed HIM. Now MSNBC is blaming him for a second attempt
to kill him. These are hate-filled people. They are everything they
accuse others of being.
pic.twitter.com/Wp0mcCf73E https://t.co/LctjmrWLBF
- Megan Basham (@megbasham) September 15, 2024
Also that same night, we had this from NBC anchor Lester Holt:
Lester Holt is basically saying Trump "deserved to be shot" and
"brought this on himself. He should be FIRED immediately!
pic.twitter.com/DSvUMC8cXn
- Graham Allen (@GrahamAllen_1) September 15, 2024
We need to remember that we're talking about the first Republican candidate
to win the popular vote in 20 years. So you can imagine how this struck at
least half the country. And I have to imagine there were probably people
watching who didn't vote for Trump but nonetheless found this kind of
commentary troubling.
And it's the kind of thing that is very hard to come back from. It's not a
mistake, it's a level of bias that's much more off-putting.
GEORGIA: Yes, that brings to mind some of the media commentary we've heard in
just the last couple of weeks surrounding the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO
Brian Thompson, with some minimizing the horrific crime or even making light
of it. So what's your second biggest media fail of 2024?
MEGAN: Well, I almost made this number one because it was such a systemic
failure and involved such obvious deception. And that was the media's
insistence throughout the spring and much of the summer that President Biden
was not suffering from any mental infirmity when it was obvious to the
American people that he was.
So let's look at MSNBC. In June, anchor Nicole Wallace blamed the Biden
appearances that were alarming the public on selectively edited clips.
As more and more Democratic lawmakers call for Biden to step aside,
remember that this was MSNBC's Nicole Wallace barely a month ago,
denouncing "a growing and insidious trend in right-wing media . to
take highly misleading and selectively edited videos of President
Biden . and. pic.twitter.com/7vrYTYiHU6
- Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) July 19, 2024
Interesting there that Wallace tried to claim Trump was having the same
lapses, but those claims have disappeared now that the election is over.
Wallace's colleague, Joe Scarborough, also sought to assure viewers that
Biden was fine.
Joe Scarborough in March: "And F you if you can't handle the truth.
This version of Biden, intellectually, analytically, is the best
Biden ever. if it weren't the truth, I wouldn't say it."
pic.twitter.com/hdnx1IpZC2
- Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) July 5, 2024
I mean the list of legacy outlets that dismissed the videos of Biden seeming
lost and confused that Americans could see with their own eyes is a really
long one. The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, the AP, and NBC all
called these videos "cheap fakes," meaning misleading edits of real video.
And when Karine Jeane-Pierre leaned into that narrative during White House
press briefings, it looked like a collaborative effort between the media and
the Biden administration.
Karine Jeane-Pierre looked you in the eye and said Biden is fine
and that the videos you saw where he is experiencing cognitive
decline were 'cheap fakes'. pic.twitter.com/DVEqPX62J7
- American Debunk (@AmericanDebunk) December 10, 2024
Well, Biden's disastrous debate performance at the end of June made it
impossible to deny his mental state and made it clear he had no chance of
winning. Then, the coverage changed immediately and many media outlets began
calling for him to step aside. Just one example, on June 21st, The New York
Times ran a story which reported that any claims that Biden was suffering
from diminished faculties were because of these cheap fakes.
Two weeks later, the day after the debate, they ran an editorial calling on
him to step down due to his mental lapses. And this was really the pattern
you saw with the legacy outlets across the board.
GEORGIA: Okay how about number three?
MEGAN: Well, I still don't think we can get away from the election yet
because the most glaring were the fact checks. Especially during the debates.
For instance, at the ABC debate between Trump and Harris, moderators David
Muir and Linsey Davis fact-checked numerous times, including when Trump was
generally correct. Like when he said, "Hard to believe, they have some states
passing legislation where you can execute the baby after birth." Davis broke
in:
Top 5 lies that the ABC News moderators refused to fact-check or
falsely fact-checked during the debate:
1. Mandatory Firearm Buybacks:
Kamala Harris told Trump to "stop lying" about her wanting to
confiscate firearms. Harris has previously stated multiple times
that she wants.
pic.twitter.com/6aXznDnq7O
- Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 11, 2024
Now this is a pretty semantic fact-check, because Harris' own running mate,
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, helped repeal a state law that required doctors
to render medical aid to a baby that survives an abortion. So in Minnesota,
doctors can let born babies die. And that has happened in at least eight
cases in that state. New York and Illinois also repealed laws that require
medical care for babies that survive abortion.
By the same token, ABC never fact-checked Harris despite the fact that Harris
made a number of false claims, like saying that there are no members of the
U.S. military on active duty in a combat zone anywhere around the world. In
fact, there are 3,000.
After the same debate, Time Magazine wrote that Trump's claim that Harris
supported funding sex changes for illegal immigrants was false. It wasn't,
and Time later had to issue a correction.
So that looked to a lot of people like glaring bias. And we saw something
similar with NBC and the vice presidential debate. Moderator Margaret Brennan
interrupted JD Vance as he was referencing undocumented immigrants in
Springfield, Ohio.
So again, a lot of viewers detected bias in that exchange.
Then there are the ethical issues in the media's favorable treatment of
Harris. MSNBC host Al Sharpton, for instance, did not disclose that the
Harris campaign made a $500,000 donation to his nonprofit right before he
conducted a softball interview with the candidate.
Meanwhile, 60 Minutes was caught having edited their interview with Harris to
make what were some pretty meandering, confusing answers to questions more
comprehensible. CBS then ignored widespread calls to release the full
transcript of the interview.
GEORGIA: So were most of these fails related to the election?
MEGAN: Definitely, because that dominated the news cycle for the year, but it
wasn't exclusively election moments. When it came to the war in Gaza, major
outlets had major egg on their faces when it was revealed that they'd been
using inaccurate statistics provided by Hamas, which has of course been
designated a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department.
Outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, CNN, the
BBC, Reuters, and AP took data disseminated by the Gaza Ministry of Health,
which is controlled by Hamas, at face value and passed it along to their
audiences. For instance, they reported fatality numbers for Palestinian women
and children that a later study found were mathematically impossible. So in
essence, they aided Hamas' PR campaign.
This kind of credulity when it comes to war coverage led to a really
embarrassing incident for CNN just recently.
On December 11th, the network ran a story from foreign correspondent Clarissa
Ward in which she encountered a man in an empty Syrian prison. He told her
he'd been detained by the Assad regime for months.
"Syria is free."
Extraordinary moment as @clarissaward and her team witness a Syrian
prisoner freed from a secret prison in Damascus.
Left alone for days without food, water or light, the man was
unaware Bashar al-Assad's regime had fallen.
pic.twitter.com/ZAnGiBlLON
- CNN International PR (@cnnipr) December 11, 2024
Well, when CNN posted the video to social media, users immediately pointed
out how inauthentic the man's appearance and behavior seemed. Like something
out of a low-budget movie.
Sure enough, within days, a Syrian fact-checking site revealed that the man
was really a former intelligence officer for the Assad government. And plenty
of people rightly questioned why CNN didn't take more time verifying the
man's identity before they rushed the story to air.
GEORGIA: Have we seen any admission from legacy outlets that these kinds of
mistakes and biases have cost them?
MEGAN: Not so much from the journalistic class, though Chris Cilizza,
formerly of CNN, did issue a mea culpa a few days ago.
In 2021, he said Republicans trying to "make Biden's mental capacity an
issue" were engaging in "lowest common denominator politics."
But on December 19th, he said this.
And a couple of their owners have. Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post,
has promised that his paper will strive for more balanced coverage going
forward. So has the owner of the Los Angeles Times.
But when it comes to those actually telling the stories, their mea culpas
have mostly been forced. Sunny Hostin, co-host on ABC's "The View," had to
read a similar disclaimer only a few weeks later after comments she made
about Trump's nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.
And I'll leave you with one more media fail, Georgia. If it's not the biggest
of the year, it's certainly the most expensive.
Back in March, during an interview with South Carolina Congresswoman Nancy
Mace, ABC Anchor George Stephanopoulos made this claim about Donald Trump
multiple times.
Nancy Mace just ended George Stephanopoulos' career, the never-Trump
media has absolutely no class! pic.twitter.com/wqEwmdn69S
- Brigitte Gabriel (@ACTBrigitte) March 10, 2024
Except, that was not true. And reportedly, Stephanopoulos' producer warned
him repeatedly, including in writing, not to make that claim on the air.
Stephanopoulos did it anyway, Trump sued, and just a few days ago, ABC agreed
to pay $16 million dollars to settle. ABC and Stephanopoulos issued a joint
statement saying they "regret" the anchor's statements regarding President
Donald J. Trump.
GEORGIA: Well, it will be interesting to see if all the bad press causes the
media to turn over a new leaf. Thanks, Megan.
MEGAN: Anytime.
--
Let's go Brandon!
