By Dave Andrusko
If so, good riddance. To take just one of a gazillion examples why that is good, Rich Noyes of Newsbusters has written a story under the headline, “TV Hits Trump With 85% Negative News vs. 78% Positive Press for Harris.”
Noyes begins
One week before Election Day, a new analysis from the Media Research Center finds that broadcast evening news coverage of the 2024 presidential race has been the most lopsided in history. Since July, ABC, CBS and NBC have treated Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris to 78 percent positive coverage, while these same networks have pummeled former Republican President Donald Trump with 85 percent negative coverage.
Is it worse than 2016?
The difference in coverage between the two candidates is far greater than in 2016, when both Trump and then-challenger Hillary Clinton received mostly negative coverage (91% negative for Trump, vs. 79% negative for Clinton).
How about 2020?
It’s even greater than in 2020, when Joe Biden was treated to 66 percent positive coverage, vs. 92 percent negative for Trump.
So that surely should help explain why Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen have written a piece for Axios [www.axios.com/2024/10/28/
Not a sentence about the grotesque media bias we’ve witnessed this cycle; it’s as if blatant partisanship isn’t part of the reason Big Media is sinking past.
They begin
The mainstream media’s dominance in narrative- and reality-shaping in presidential elections shattered in 2024.
The future of news and information is upon us. Welcome to the shards of glass election — and news era.
Why it matters: How and where Americans get informed has broken into scores of pieces — from young men on Joe Rogan’s podcasts, to suburban women following Instagram influencers.
Newspaper readers are old, and “All three cable news networks skew very old in viewership, with median ages ranging from 67 to 70.”
Thus it only makes sense for Trump to go on for three hours with Joe Rogan because he “reached way more potential male voters” (33 million views over the weekend) than he could have with a dozen or more appearances on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC combined.”
But Trump’s team has him going on a boatload of podcasts. (He is seemingly able to campaign virtually non-stop.)
- He appeared on a livestream with controversial streamer Adin Ross — hosted on the niche live streaming video platform Kick, which is known for looser moderation than a rival like Twitch. At its peak, it had over 580,000 viewers.
- Trump sat for podcasts with comedian and actor Theo Von, comedian Andrew Schulz’s “Flagrant” and Barstool Sports’ “Bussin’ with the Boys,” hosted by former NFL football players Will Compton and Taylor Lewan. The Theo Von conversation racked up 14 million views on YouTube, the nation’s most powerful video platform.
- Trump also went on Logan Paul’s “Impaulsive” podcast — reportedly a recommendation from Trump’s 18-year-old son, Barron.
Harris had tried her luck with non-traditional media but to a far lesser extent. VandeHei and Allen ignore the elephant in the room. She had a short time to campaign after replacing the ousted Joe Biden and made the critical error of avoiding virtually all media for months, a colossal mistake.
But then again, she mostly bombed even with the coziest interviewers.
The authors bemoan the arrival of the “shards of glass election.” When “attention is scattered across scores of shards, it’s easier to propagate conspiracy theories and manipulate ‘news.’” They say, “It’s way harder to catch Russian misinformation campaigns when they are unleashed inside a dozen different information bubbles.”
Perhaps they long for the day when the three networks and a handful of newspapers had a virtual monopoly. Is not their disappearance as the arbiters of what is “acceptable news” to be welcomed?
What VandeHei and Allen appear to be saying is that the Big Media Guys still have their role, for example, in presenting big events such presidential debates. However, the younger audience looks elsewhere for an explanation of what just happened, such as podcasts, “influencers,” You Tube, Instagram, TikTok, and streaming audio, to name just a few.
Their conclusion?
The winner of the election might speed or slightly slow this lightning-fast transition. If Harris wins, she and her staff are much closer — and responsive — to traditional media. If Trump wins, the shift will accelerate.
Their fears?
Just imagine, if Trump wins, the power of Elon Musk after he bought Twitter, and turned it into X — and then went all-in to elect Trump. The X-Rogan-right-wing podcaster network would form a new mass media industrial complex.