Taking a page from Hungary’s fascist prime minister Viktor Orbán, Trump has worked to delegitimize news media, which he refers to as “fake news,” since he arrived on the political scene in 2015. As newspapers’ business model has collapsed with the ascendancy of the Internet, disinformation has filled the vacuum, and Trump has made clear he will come after independent media in his second term.
National news organizations have come under criticism for “sanewashing” Trump during the campaign, particularly after the owners of the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times put the kibosh on editorial endorsements of Kamala Harris. These newspapers, as well as The New York Times, provided solid reporting in the months leading up to the election. They provided plenty of material for readers to make up their own minds who was the better candidate for president, but they could not break the firehose of lies laid down by Trump and his MAGAts, with the support of Fox News Channel, Newsmax and “influencers” in social media, many of whom were found to have connections with Russian operators.
National newspapers and TV news still play important roles in informing our democracy, but they aren’t reaching younger voters.
Exit polls did not ask voters where they got their political news, but an NBC News survey in April found that Democrats who supported Joe Biden at that time relied more on newspapers, national network news and digital news websites. Trump supporters were more likely to get their news from cable news, social media or they don’t follow political news. Young people, 49 years and younger, were most likely to get their news from social media.
A survey conducted by Pew Research in September found 35% of adults got most of their political and election news from TV, 21% got their news from news websites or apps, 20% got their news from social media, 8% from Google or other search engines, 5% from radio, 5% from podcasts, 3% from newspapers and 4% from other sources.
However, the sources vary widely be age groups. TV was the dominant medium for older voters: with 63% of people 65 or older and 44% of people aged 50-64, while 23% of people 30-49 and 10% of the 18-29 age group watched TV news. Social media was the dominant source for those 18-29 (44%) and 30-49 (23%). Bringing up the rear were radio, the prime source for 7% of ages 50-64 and 5% of those 65 and over,, and newspapers or magazines, 2% for those under 65 and 5% of those 65 and older.
Progressives still need broadcast media that air our issues. MSNBC is the most prominent left-of-center cable news channel (which many progressives would argue is more centrist than leftist), but its future is uncertain as owner Comcast is planning to spin off MSNBC and other channels next year, as more consumers swap out their cable TV subscriptions for streaming platforms.
Paul Verna, principal analyst and vice president of content for market research company eMarketer, said Comcast’s decision to divest itself from most of its cable TV channels is a reflection of that trend.
“The writing is on the wall that the cable TV business is a dwindling business,” Verna said.
Thom Hartmann noted, “Private equity (like Bain Capital) and large media operation acquisitions have a long history of gutting media properties to increase their profitability; often this includes what a study by Stanford University researchers described as a trend to ‘substitute coverage of local politics for coverage of national politics, and use more conservative framing.’
“Air America radio (for which I wrote the original business plan and which carried my program) was on the air in virtually every major market in the United States, having leased over 50 major, high-powered radio stations from Clear Channel.
“My program regularly beat Rush Limbaugh in the ratings: When I was invited to the Obama White House following that election, one person associated with the campaign noted to me privately that they believed Air America had played a meaningful role in Obama’s 2008 election.
“That same year, Mitt Romney’s private equity company, Bain Capital, acquired Clear Channel and, in 2009, began reclaiming their stations, replacing Air America content with mostly sports. By coincidence, around that same time it appears Romney decided he’d run against Obama in the next election.
“As Air America lost station after station, its ability to earn revenue through selling advertising collapsed. By 2010, the entire network was bankrupt just in time for Romney to run for president.
“Will the same thing happen to MSNBC? Stay tuned.”
We can also expect renewed attacks on government funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributed $525 million in grants to public radio and TV stations in 2024. Trump tried to zero out funding for public broadcasting during his first term, but failed. Elon Musk, who considers NPR as “government-affiliated” news organization, is expected to target CPB in his search for “wasteful government spending” that can be cut to help pay for Trump’s planned $4 trillion in tax cuts for billionaires.
Progressive radio and TV platforms include Free Speech TV (including Thom Hartmann, Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman, Rising Up with Sonali Kolhatkar and Edge of Sports with Dave Zirin, as well as favorites Stephanie Miller, who does a comic take on the otherwise grim news, and others). They are available on the web at FreeSpeech.org, as well as Dish, Sling, Roku, AppleTV and DirecTV). The Political Voices Network is on YouTube, Progressive Voices is available on TuneIn or ProgressiveVoices.com and the Progress Channel is on SiriusXM.
November marked the 30th anniversary of The Progressive Populist. We never had much of a business plan, since no corporations were interested in advertising with us, but thanks to readers’ support of our sustainability fund, we can pay our bills and we’ll continue publishing our twice-monthly Journal from the Heartland at an affordable price, with your favorite columnists, as well as provide our online website at Populist.com.
Publications like The Nation, The American Prospect, The Guardian, In These Times, Mother Jones and The New Republic and others have cut back their printed editions, but keep up with breaking progressive news and analysis on their websites, despite funding bases that are trivial compared to conservative publications supported by rightwing billionaire networks. Progressive websites, such as RawStory.com, CommonDreams.org, Alternet.org, LAProgressive.com, DemocraticUnderground.com and DailyKos.com, also do their part in reporting progressive news.
As Thom Hartmann often closes his broadcast, despair is not an option. Keep in touch, whichever way you can. — JMC
From The Progressive Populist, December 15, 2024
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