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Those old enough to remember recall how the “Evening News” with Walter Cronkite or The Huntley–Brinkley Report riveted the nation.  With few sources of news, network journalism dominated information flows.  Controlling the narrative became very important to the government.

Ironically, one commentator of the time, David Brinkley, later became quite a critic of his profession and the almost religious reverence that was created around it.  Near the end of his life, he said, “As long as I’ve known anything about politics, I’ve been skeptical. And it has evolved. The more I saw, the more skeptical I became.”

It has become lore, if not fact, that when Cronkite came to oppose the Vietnam War, President Lyndon Johnson reportedly said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” Whether Johnson uttered those words exactly is not the point.  It certainly reflected his sentiment.

The reason was that most American people at the time had faith in the media, and thus, what the media said could sway public opinion.  It is often forgotten that many people at the time complained about media bias. Still, most people believed in the institutions of our prominent newspapers and broadcast networks. In hindsight, it probably was a mistake even then, but that was the zeitgeist of the time.  The more we learn about media and government involvement with it, the more we think that confidence was misplaced even then.

How things have changed! The most recent poll from the Gallup Organization shows the demise of this once-influential institution. America’s trust in mass media is at its lowest point in 50 years.

To quote from their survey:

“About two-thirds of Americans in the 1970s trusted the ‘mass media — such as newspapers, TV and radio” either “a great deal” or “a fair amount” to “[report] the news fully, accurately and fairly.” By the next measurement in 1997, confidence had fallen to 53%, and it has gradually trended downward since 2003. Americans are now divided into rough thirds, with 31% trusting the media a great deal or a fair amount, 33% saying they do “not [trust it] very much,” and 36%, up from 6% in 1972, saying they have no trust at all in it.”

“Whereas about a third of U.S. adults say they have no trust at all in the mass media, 59% of Republicans hold this view — a view that saw a particularly sharp increase between 2015 and 2017, when it rose 21 percentage points to 48%. Republicans’ lack of trust in the media topped 50% for the first time in 2020 and has since remained at the majority level. Lack of trust is also up sharply among independents, now 42%, while it continues to be low — 6% this year — among Democrats.”

Also remarkable in the survey is that residual confidence in media is mostly among older Americans while younger Americans are more skeptical. That younger people are wary of media is terrific, but one wonders why they can be so quickly stampeded into intellectual and other types of fads. Maybe we will make some real progress when they regard their teachers with equal skepticism.

However, our main task in this article is to speculate what could cause such a precipitate decline in public faith in journalism.

Some suggest that the rise of alternative media was able, despite its small audience, to catch the press in some of its big lies. One example you might remember was the demise of Dan Rather and his use of false documents to accuse President Bush of avoiding the draft. It was a “pajama boy” who, sitting around in front of a computer,  discovered that Rather’s document used font styles from Microsoft and could not have been used on a typewriter used by the Texas National Guard of the era in question.

This example began to show the decentralizing forces of the internet and gave rise to Pajamas Media, or PJ Media, of today.  The idea was that the people sitting around in their pajamas in front of a computer could outsleuth network reporters, and they proved that they could.  We see the beginning of citizen journalism.

Rush Limbaugh was a pioneer in alternative media, literally remaking AM radio.  He also played a pivotal role in challenging established media narratives.

We do think the rise of internet media has been a powerful force. However, if the media had not been lying, new forms of journalism would not have had anything to say. 

In short, it is not an argument about the chicken and the egg.  The lying had been happening in media for years, but the internet and talk radio finally gave voice to previously isolated complaints. Established media is struggling mightily, as is its partner the government,  to shut down dissident voices with claims of “disinformation”.  In the US, that attempt seems to have run into considerable resistance, partly due to what Elon Musk has done with his platform X. But in Europe, political leaders in Germany and England seem hellbent on stamping out free speech that conflicts with their goal.  The only free speech they seem to support is the freedom of porn producers, Islamic radicals, and Left wing professors.

Recent revelations from DOGE also confirm that many national and international media companies were taking money directly from the government.  The “free press” is far less free than many thought.

We at The Prickly Pear consider ourselves part of the citizen journalism movement. While new technology allows us to speak to more than 50,000 readers, we think the persistent lying has caused the media’s demise. If they were not such dishonest and shoddy journalists, we would not have so much material to work with. 

Here is a short list of Big Lies of recent vintage:

The George Floyd myth and the rise of Black Lives Matter.  We know from the autopsy report that a police officer did not murder Floyd.  It may have been lousy policing and horrible PR, but it was not murder, and Floyd was no saint.  During Black Lives Matter and 120 days of rioting, the news media not only covered up the background on Floyd but also the openly communist origins of Black Lives Matter.

The mental health of President Biden.  The news media either sat on its hands or openly promoted falsehoods about both Biden’s condition and who was actually running the country.

Russian collusion and Donald Trump.  The news media promoted the idea of some kinky sex trap that allowed Russia to “control” the ideas of Donald Trump.  It led to impeachment and years of political upheaval.  The media misled the people about the veracity of the dossier, its funding by the Democrat Party, and the collusion of our intelligence and police agencies.

Hunter Biden’s laptop and the Biden Family criminal enterprise.  The media consistently denied the veracity of the laptop’s contents and hid the fact that the FBI had the contents for years and knew of their accuracy. They missed entirely uncovering perhaps the worst criminality by any previous President in history.

The origins of COVID-19 and government response to the crisis.  While the story is still unfolding, it appears the US government funded a project in China that escaped from the lab and killed millions of people worldwide. The government’s response was to cover up their responsibility, and further, the government promoted an ineffective and dangerous untested vaccine, which they then forced on the people. They made up the six-foot rule, lied about the effectiveness of masks, and denied people their Constitutional rights to speak, travel, assemble, and make medical decisions. Their lockdown policies wrecked the world economy, distorted fiscal budgets worldwide, and let loose a terrible inflation. All through this period, the government lied about its role, and for the most part, mainstream media covered up the truth and thereby engaged in election interference.

The origins of the Ukraine War and our government’s role in changing their government and controlling their press. Putin is a nasty character, but there is no doubt that our government had a hand in aggravating the situation and has prolonged the war. There has been tremendous waste and corruption in military and civilian aid administration. We suspect much more will be coming out in the future.

The security failings of Washington running up to and during the January 6th riots. We still do not know to what extent government agents were involved and what role they played in turning a regrettable riot into another cause used to destabilize the country, imprison political opponents, and engage in election interference.

Inflation and its causes. We were told that inflation was caused by “supply constraints” and was “transitory”.  Now inflation is surging again after the Federal Reserve said it was over and they could pivot to lower interest rates. The government has blown a substantial financial asset bubble that could destabilize the world and derail the Trump agenda. Government finances are in serious disrepair, which could put the nation in a doom loop where we have to print money to fulfill social obligations to Social Security and Medicare, two programs many citizens depend upon.  Failure to perform by the government could be catastrophic.

These are just eight recent big lies in which the established press ultimately failed to inform the public and provide a factual and balanced account of events. There are many more that are important but maybe not quite so consequential.

A free press is vital in a properly functioning democratic republic because the public often makes political choices based on what they think is a truthful accounting of events.  An ignorant or misled public has difficulty making correct political choices.

In short, respect for established media is in the toilet because they deserve it. They lied to us, covered up government abuse, and failed their vital functions. New alternatives are now available, and corporate print and broadcast media will likely never recover.

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Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons