Attribution: Melvinmazel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Geoff Carter
Traditional print and broadcast media are under fire from political forces seeking to create—and disseminate—their own separate realities. Masters of disinformation and proponents of downright lies, including the myth of the stolen 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican followers regard traditional journalists and the truths they report as a threat to their existence. Conservative media outlets like Fox News, One American News, and others constantly revile and denigrate mainstream media like the New York Times, The Washington Post, and broadcast news organizations like NBC, ABC, and CBS. In short, Trump and his MAGA supporters claim any news sources that undercut their position are telling lies.
The national media is their prime target, and the attacks seem to be working. According to Axios, only 32% of the population reports having a great or fair amount of trust in the media. Split along ideological lines, 58% of Democrats trust the mainstream media, while only 11% of Republicans do. Our confidence in the free press, the institution that uncovered Watergate, published The Pentagon Papers, and succeeded in discrediting the rampant McCarthyism and blacklisting of the 1950s, has been significantly eroded.
The time-honored rules of journalism including multiple verified sources, independent fact verification, and personal ethics, safeguards to ensure reporters are telling the truth, have become next to meaningless. Stalwart and courageous journalists like Upton Sinclair, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, and Seymour Hersch would be dismissed as incompetent hacks today. So, if they don’t trust the old guard, who do Americans go to for the news?
According to Pew Research, 48% of Americans get their news from social media or news websites while only 32% now watch TV for their daily news. Reliance on print media for the new has dropped down to a pitiful 9%. As a result, hundreds of local newspapers have folded and even the larger metropolitan papers, like the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, have been pared down to a bare-bones edition comprised of mostly syndicated USA Today stories. The local beat is nearly extinct.
Yet local news on both TV and social media is holding firm. According to Pew, 85% of those polled see at least some value in local news. Many viewers trust local journalists and think they are doing their job well, and more viewers trust local over national news coverage.
Yet actually watching local news is sort of like eating peanut butter on Wonder Bread. Or maybe watching a bad stand-up routine. In their mostly sad efforts to be entertaining, friendly, and genuine, many of our local news teams engage in (what they perceive as witty and amusing) repartee. They joke about their kids, the weather, or other inane subjects and are about as far away from legitimate broadcast journalists as a McDonald’s fry cook is from a gourmet sous chef. The news stories presented on local broadcasts are mostly thirty-second glosses about shootings, fires, or bad car accidents. You get where and when and sometimes how, but never why. There is rarely any in-depth coverage of any political scandal or social problem.
On our local airwaves, TV news coverage of the recent financial scandal of Milwaukee Public Schools’ non-disclosures of expenditures and budget shortfalls consists of mostly cameras recording contentious board meetings. No one is asking—much less answering—the big questions. Where did the money go? Who supported the multi-million-dollar referendum passed to support MPS? Did the board members supporting it know about the budget problems? Were they back it to cover up the discrepancies? Questions about where the money went, who did it go with, who was in charge, and who screwed up aren’t even addressed by local news coverage. Their latest feature concerning MPS was a story about the man hired to come in and straighten things out.
Maybe local news is catering to their audience. Maybe the average viewer doesn’t want the in-depth facts. Maybe they’re happy just knowing that MPS screwed up and that they were ripped off by the referendum. Maybe the average viewer watches local news to confirm their suspicions—and their fears—about the big city. Another kid got shot. It figures. Another carjacking. No surprise. In many ways, local news is like an affirmation of the dangers outside our cozy living rooms. And the weather and sports are a continuation of those affirmations. They are always the same but different.
Local TV stations also make big deals about reporting “good” news about the positive people in the city, which is nice, but hardly news. So, in many ways, local television news has become a sort of opiate of the masses. It makes us feel good but deadens our ability to think.
A couple weeks ago, according to The New York Times, The Sinclair Broadcasting Group, the owner or operator of 193 local network affiliates, sent out a script for their affiliates to read during their broadcasts. Many anchors, some of whom later said they uncomfortable about it, were forced to read a script stating that “…false news has become all too common on social media” and “some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias” and “this is extremely dangerous to democracy”. The script also encouraged viewers to report what they perceived to be unfair coverage. Sinclair has been known to send stories which they require their affiliates to run, many of which are favorable to former president Donald Trump.
The upshot is the Sinclair Ur-message sent out to millions of unsuspecting consumers of local news is designed to sow distrust of the national media. Trust us, say the local affiliates, but not too much, but definitely beware of those social media and other platforms that are telling you lies.
A free press and a well-informed electorate are necessary for a healthy democracy to exist. A corporate missive attacking the media, an attack that was joined ex-president Trump on X as he railed against CNN and “Fake NBC”, is an attack on our free will and our right to choose our own leaders. Homogenizing—and dumbing down–our news and demonizing the truth is the first turn on the road to fascism. The World War II Axis powers exercised complete control over their countries’ media, as does North Korea and China.
When The Fairness Doctrine was overturned by Ronald Reagan, it paved the way for Fox News and other propagandists. This Sinclair broadcast is the latest skirmish in MAGA’s war against the media and its attempt to derail the will of the voters.
The free is a cornerstone of our democracy; we must listen to it, we must read it, and we must use our own common sense to determine its worth—not the rehashed words of a corporate marketing company spewed out by some goofy anchor from the local news. Trust established journalism. They’re trained to get it right, and they’re devoted to the truth. Believe it or not.