The term “mainstream” media to describe establishment propaganda organs — CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, ABC, NBC, Reuters, The Associated Press, and so on — should be forever abandoned. If the 2016 election proved anything, it is that what passes for the “mainstream” media is in fact wildly out of touch with actual mainstream America. So out of touch are the establishment’s propaganda outlets that “fringe” media or “extremist” media would be far a more appropriate adjective. Some critics have even started calling them the “enemedia.” The establishment’s propaganda organs have also been exposed as impotent, with even all of them combined unable to get their globalist candidate elected.
Trump said all along he was running against the “crooked media.” And he clearly won. After their bizarre behavior throughout the 2016 election, what little remained of the establishment media’s credibility with the American public may now be forever lost, analysts say. The leftist press spent months assuring Americans that Trump could not and would not win, that the Republican Party might even be destroyed forever, that the Democrats could take back Congress, that Trump and his supporters were “racist,” “sexist,” and all the other hateful labels they could use to demonize mainstream Americans, and on an on.
Instead of submitting, Americans defied the establishment’s propaganda apparatus like never before, and the media ended up looking like total fools — or deliberate liars who were trying to deceive the American people all along. Indeed, the media may never recover its now-decimated credibility and prestige following the devastating and potentially fatal blow they were dealt on November 8. Obama seemed to understand all of that as he blasted the “wild, wild West” media landscape shortly before the election revealed conclusively that the establishment media was done.
It does seem like some establishment publications and the far-left “journalists” who work there might have even believed their own propaganda, assuming something more nefarious like inside knowledge of planned voter fraud was not afoot. Consider, for example, that the dying leftist Newsweek sent out 125,000 copies of its dying magazine with “Madam President” on the cover. “Like everybody else, we got it wrong,” said Tony Romando, CEO of Topix Media, the Newsweek partner that produces special issues for the magazine, apparently oblivious to the many sources that did not actually get it wrong.
Brent Bozell, president of the non-profit watchdog group Media Research Center, said in a statement that the pundits believed the media and their own spin, “not just on the coronation of Hillary Clinton, but more important, on America’s repudiation of Donald Trump.” “All season long the pro-Hillary press treated Trump’s followers with utter contempt,” he added. “At the same time the leftwing media were giving aid and comfort to Hillary Clinton, covering up her scandals when they could, spinning them in her favor when they couldn’t. Don’t anyone here deny it. We documented it all season long. What we saw is what the public saw.”
“This was a massive repudiation of the press,” added Bozell, whose group runs the “Don’t Believe the Liberal Media” campaign. “The liberal media were the second-biggest losers last night. But as opposed to Clinton, their loss continues. Their credibility is shot, quite possibly for good. It is unfortunate for the honorable, professional journalists working — yes, they do exist — but it’s an incredible win for the American people.”
Indeed, numerous polls show that only a fringe and apparently very gullible minority believes the establishment press today. Even before Trump’s victory, multiple surveys showed that Americans had wised up to the establishment media. Among Republicans, even before Trump was elected, just 14 percent had trust in the establishment media. Americans more broadly also lost confidence in the media, with less than one third of those surveyed expressing even a “fair” amount of trust in the national press. After the election, the numbers are undoubtedly even worse. Some of that implosion was due to the latest election, but it was a long time coming.
More than a few establishment media organs and operatives did apologize and acknowledge being wildly detached with reality in their election coverage. But in an almost unbelievable shift, the establishment media that got everything so wrong when it explained why Trump would lose and destroy the GOP is now suddenly pretending to be expert at explaining why he won — racism, sexism, ignorance, and more. And even after being so thoroughly repudiated by voters, globalist propaganda organs like WaPo and CNN are still manufacturing phony scandals and trying to give Trump advice about what he should and should not do.
Case in point: After the announcement that Trump would be appointing former Breitbart chief Steve Bannon as a top White House official, the media hyperventilated about a “backlash” and alleged “white nationalism.” When Trump appointed establishment Republican Reince Priebus as chief of staff, no such media frothing at the mouth was observed. “Trump faces backlash over appointing Bannon as a top aide, a choice critics say will empower white nationalists,” reads a WaPo headline representative of the sentiments expressed by other discredited establishment sources. As a general rule, if the establishment media is opposed, it’s probably a good thing, and vice versa.
On more than one occasion, globalist propaganda voices also claimed Trump and his supporters were living in an alternate reality. The reality now appears to be the opposite. The Electoral College projections by establishment sources, for example, were, in retrospect, almost beyond ridiculous. On November 3, every major projection — AP, Washington Post, New York Times, ABC, CNN, Fox, NBC, NPR, and more — had Clinton winning in a landslide. Many had her up by over 100 electoral votes. In reality, Trump dominated, earning 290 electoral votes to Clinton’s 228. And that assumes no vote fraud on the part of the Clinton camp, which may not be a reasonable assumption considering the growing amounts of evidence pointing to organized fraud nationwide.
The chances of a Trump victory were dismissed by establishment propaganda organs as almost an impossibility. The ultra-far-left Huffington Post, for example, which at first covered Trump’s campaign in its “entertainment” section, said there was a 98 percent chance that Clinton would win the general election. Other establishment propaganda organs were not quite as extreme, but still apparently living in an alternate reality. The New York Times, for instance, gave Trump a 15 percent chance of winning. Almost every outlet once characterized as “mainstream” also predicted a landslide for Clinton.
More than a few establishment media organs, including now-discredited neocon-globalist voices that pretend to be “conservative,” were busy before the election celebrating what they claimed would be the imminent demise of the entire Republican Party. They were plotting to rebuild it on a neocon-globalist program. Instead, the GOP now firmly controls both houses of Congress and the White House, with Trump taking office amid more GOP power than any Republican president since the 1920s.
Even establishment voices were amazed. Council on Foreign Relations operative Newt Gingrich, who stood by Trump while the rest of the CFR cabal trashed him, excoriated the establishment media for being so out of touch. “If they had not been so insulated from the rest of the country, they might have seen this: the vast majority of Americans found them deplorable. This is the reality the establishment refused to see,” said Gingrich, who despite his newfound anti-establishment persona has long been a loyal servant of establishment interests on everything from global-warming alarmism to supporting the savage regime in Beijing. “It was deeply moving to see what citizens can do despite the overwhelming forces working them against them.”
Liberty-minded Pastor Chuck Baldwin, who ran for president on the Constitution Party ticket in 2008, said on social media that the “mainstream media (MSM)” was actually the “biggest loser” on November 8. “Never in history had the MSM banded so tightly together with the single goal and aim in mind of completely destroying one man’s political campaign,” Baldwin explained. “They were relentless and ruthless. They truly used every dastardly, duplicitous, and devilish trick in the book to defeat Trump. And, for once, the American people completely saw through it.”
Now, the establishment propaganda machine is a national joke, and the alternative media is becoming the new mainstream. The new mainstream media — voices such as James O’Keefe of Project Veritas, who did the real investigative journalism that all of the media should have been doing, but who was censored by much of the establishment machine — was overjoyed at the new media paradigm. Thanking “fellow truth seekers and internet sleuths,” O’Keefe noted that everything was changing, as regular citizens on places like Reddit help perform the investigative journalism that the media was once counted on to do.
“One of the great ironies of our lives is that the political class and media, were not just wrong, but profoundly wrong,” O’Keefe explained. “Now they will have to face accusations of [being] discredited; now they that will have to be scrutinized; now they will find themselves under the microscope of the American people, who showed they wield enormous power. I’m here to tell you in power and in the media that you are all on notice. You be will held accountable for your crimes and your betrayal of trust. Because we have people embedded everywhere. We’re watching you. We’re talking to you, we’re gaining your trust, we’re learning your darkest secrets and we are recording you…. For the government media complex, you’re on notice.”
Some establishment media hacks — especially of the tax-funded variety — failed to get the message. Instead of humility, tax-subsidized National Public Radio (NPR) propagandist Garrison Keillor, for instance, unleashed vitriolic attacks against his fellow Americans for electing Trump. In his screed about the election, he claimed Trump was elected by “uneducated white males” who never actually thought Trump would win. “They wanted only to whoop and yell, boo at the H-word, wear profane T-shirts, maybe grab a crotch or two, jump in the RV with a couple of six-packs and go out and shoot some spotted owls,” he fumed.
Others on the left side of the spectrum, though, did seem to understand. According to investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald, Trump won because “human beings are not going to follow and obey the exact people they most blame for their suffering. They’re going to do exactly the opposite: purposely defy them and try to impose punishment in retaliation.” “Their instruments for retaliation are Brexit and Trump,” Greenwald said, exhibiting a sense of understanding largely absent among establishment-minded left-wing journalists. “Those are their agents, dispatched on a mission of destruction: aimed at a system and culture they regard — not without reason — as rife with corruption and, above all else, contempt for them and their welfare.”
Whether Trump will be willing and able to follow through on all his campaign promises to stop globalism and restore America remains to be seen. But the implosion of the establishment’s discredited propaganda machine will have benefits for America and freedom far into the future. And regardless of one’s views on Trump, or of what the establishment’s pet “journalists” say about what happened, there can be no doubt that in this election, the national liberal media were exposed as liars or fools — or both — and impotent to boot. And that alone is cause for major celebration.
Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU.
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