The mainstream media’s war on freedom of expression is continuing. Any headlines that criticizes Trumps inner circle is to be banned at the LA Times.
Across North America, mainstream media outlets will tell you over and over again that they are highly trustworthy. They frequently tell you that if you want trusted sources of information, you turn to them. This while saying that the internet is this massive cesspools of lies, hate, and disinformation and that people should never turn to the internet for anything at all no matter what… unless its their social media accounts and websites… that’s OK, but nothing else because that’s just asking for trouble right there.
When you see news organizations talk about their coverage, they’ll be happy to tell you that it’s all completely above board. Everything they do is accurate and totally fact-checked. There is absolutely nothing wrong with their coverage. Everything they put out is perfect in every way. Their work is practically saintly in their honesty and integrity. Everything is fact based and completely free of political bias.
Yet, when you turn to how the audience views their coverage, you’ll get a very different result. We’ve had article after article after article talking about polling and research looking at how much people are trusting the media in the last several years and those findings are repeatedly about how trust in the media continues to hit rock bottom.
So, the natural question here is this: why does the mainstream media’s audience disagree with the media’s seeming self importance and self-described reliability? The main talking point for the mainstream media has generally been to blame the internet. It’s all the internet’s fault that people are less trusting of the news. Why? According to them, it’s because of all that disinformation and conspiracy theories (specifically from the far right) running rampant on the internet and that’s the sole reason why people are less trusting of the news.
Does that play a role? Sure. Is that the whole picture? Absolutely not. If you ever had a chance to dig through the polling numbers, it’s not just far right conspiracy theorist maniacs that are not trusting the news. It’s also an increasing portion of left leaning people as well. This runs counter to two narratives: that the media is liberal propaganda and that the distrust is coming from far right conspiracy theorists. That alone should tell you something isn’t adding up.
What’s a good place to start here? Well, let’s look at the mainstream media’s coverage. Lucky for you, we did that already. We’ve found lies upon lies upon lies piled up with open lobbying and more lobbying with an extra heaping of sane washing of Donald Trump while taking down a respected president in the process.
So, is it really that people are being told right wing lies that there is distrust in the media or is it because there is lies and bias being repeatedly found in the coverage? Just to pour salt in the wound, the mainstream media has openly said to the public that they hate free speech. In another instance, the mainstream media insulted their audience’s collective intelligence by suggesting that the audience is just too darned stupid to understand the role of journalism, so one member decided to reword the journalism code of ethics – as if that was somehow going to make a difference in the fundamental problems being seen in the mainstream media these days.
It does lead one to wonder, how is publishing disinformation so much, providing huge amounts political cover to a convicted felon, and accusing the audience of being at fault for the fallout of this supposed to restore trust in the media? I mean, honestly, this is a plan that would be appropriately topped off with someone shouting “the Aristocrats!” more than anything else.
Now, to be fair, not everyone who walks the halls within mainstream media journalism outlets are stupid. Some of them do, in fact, see the self-inflicted damage that is being done. A lot of the blame being handed out does, in fact, have to do with the direction the ownership of these outlets have been taking in the last while. In October, we reported on the disturbing story about how the Washington Post staff had come together and concluded that the paper was set to endorse vice president, Kamala Harris. While all the necessary analysis was complete and they were ready to publish, Washington Post owner, Jeff Bezos, intervened and blocked the endorsement for fear that it would upset convicted felon, Donald Trump.
In a similar move, the LA Times ownership similarly blocked endorsements of any kind for vice president, Kamala Harris. That move sparked resignations from the staff.
Many pointed out that these are all excellent examples of the billionaire class circumventing the editorial independence of the press to push political narratives that they want to push instead. The pair of incidences completely eviscerated the concept of an arms length editorial staff independently reporting the news in a fair fact-based manner. It also offered some of the best proof yet that the mainstream media publishes content that gets the blessing of the corporate ownership who has their own agenda – be it business, political, or both.
You might think that these pair of incidences would be enough for the ownership to take a look in the mirror and ask what the heck were they thinking, but that is apparently what is not going on. Instead, the corporate ownership saw all this and decided to double down on the crackdown of what opinions are allowed to be printed and what isn’t. Techdirt is noting that the LA Times owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, has decided to crack down further on the editorials that are printed where he would personally review all editorial headlines to ensure that it won’t hurt the feelings of Trumps inner circle including Elon Musk:
Considering the billionaire class keeps pretending that they’re concerned about free speech, then doing shit like this suggests it’s really speech criticizing themselves and the levels of corruption and obscene wealth that they actually dislike.
We had noted that LA Times owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, had tried to get a cabinet position in the first Trump administration, which might have explained his reasoning. And now it appears he’s taken things to a new level. According to Oliver Darcy (who is very plugged in to the media world), Soon-Shiong got so upset about an opinion piece that criticized Elon Musk that he has declared that all headlines for opinion pieces must be run through him personally before the pieces can be run. This has alarmed the newsroom.
As Darcy notes, this all seems part of a pattern of Soon-Shiong trying to ingratiate himself into Trump/Musk circles:
Soon-Shiong, who once fashioned himself as a Black Lives Matter-supporting vaccine proponent, has morphed into a Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Jennings fanboy. Since Trump’s victory in November, Soon-Shiong has turned to X to criticize the news media, praise Trump’s cabinet picks, and appeal to a MAGA audience. The change in behavior has confounded his journalists, who wonder what happened to the Soon-Shiong whose newspaper enforced strict Covid restrictions and emphasized its support for social justice causes.
But Soon-Shiong’s efforts to reduce the appearance of bias go beyond just reviewing headlines. Darcy notes that Soon-Shiong’s supposed “solution” to complaints of “biased news” is that all stories published by the LA Times will have an AI-powered “bias meter” on them.
This seems like a deeply misguided idea, designed mainly to placate critics who see any coverage they dislike as biased, rather than to do anything useful. Especially in an age where it has been shown repeatedly, and scientifically, that the Republican world is buried in layers upon layers of bullshit. That means, as Stephen Colbert once noted, “reality has a liberal bias.” In such a world, reporting accurately may be deemed as “biased” towards liberal beliefs.
One of the things I’ve long been concerned over is that corporate owners controlling what does and doesn’t get published to ensure that their own political beliefs are reflected. At this point, the media owners are outright announcing that this is official policy. The question I ask is this: how the hell are people supposed to trust the media when their corporate ownership is pulling crap like this? Is it really a question at this point why people have little to no trust in the mainstream media?
Seriously, if this is being outright announced by at least one source, how many others are quietly doing the same thing? We’ve seen the Trump sane washing on full display during the last election, so I would personally wonder how many corporate owners are telling their staff, “Not if the coverage could upset Trump.”
I know some people are wondering why I’m so upset at the mainstream media at times. It’s crap like this that upsets me – this along with the same outlets repeatedly saying how their coverage is perfect in every way and that if you disagree, you are either wrong or misinformed. I’m not upset at the media in a vacuum. I’m seeing the corruption and suspicious activity. If the polls and surveys are any indication, I’m far from alone as well.
