“It may be that this present system, with no modifications and no experiments, can survive. Perhaps the money-making machine has some kind of built-in perpetual motion, but I do not think so. To a very considerable extent, the media of mass communications in a given country reflects the political, economic and social climate in which it grows and flourishes. That is the reason our system differs from the British and the French, and also from the Russian and the Chinese. We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. And our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.” — Edward R. Murrow, October 15, 1958, speaking to the Radio and Television News Association’s annual convention
By Steve Woodward
Distilled to its essence, CBS correspondent Edward R. Murrow’s speech delivered to broadcasting colleagues 66 years ago warned that television, then in its infancy, already had begun to betray its audiences and imperil its long-term viability. There is no one even remotely similar to Murrow remaining in the 21st century corporate media. Murrow cared about truth, substance and an informed population, all now obsolete.
Murrow also said this during his remarks in 1958 in Chicago: “I have decided to express my concern about what I believe to be happening to radio and television. … I have no feud, either with my employers, any sponsors, or with the professional critics of radio and television. But I am seized with an abiding fear regarding what these two instruments are doing to our society, our culture and our heritage.”
The Democrat Party’s precipitous march to the ideological Left likely began long before Murrow’s speech, around the time Woodrow Wilson ascended to the U.S. presidency in 1912 espousing “progressivism”. It ebbed and flowed in the decades ahead, revived by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society.
But the Democrats soon entered a period of near extinction in presidential politics, putting forth presidential aspirants named George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Ted Kennedy, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis. Carter was the only one who actually made it to the Oval Office as president but his gain was the Democrat’s loss. His ineptitude assured Carter will be remembered among the most failed presidents.
Then, in 1992, along came William Jefferson Clinton, the youthful but obscure governor of Arkansas. It is notable that his ascension to the presidency coincided with the first cracks in network television’s absolute information dominance. Cable TV’s CNN cemented its legitimacy during riveting coverage of Operation Desert Storm in 1991. The internet was coming into its own with 10 web sites up and running (including the Raleigh News & Observer’s Nando.net, one of the first digital platforms adopted by a newspaper). There would be nearly 3,000 functional web sites by 1995. And a former disc jockey named Rush Limbaugh was conducting an experiment that would become a genre — conservative talk radio, of which he would be king for 30 years.
Deep beneath the surface, something else was happening that would influence and corrupt mainstream media in ways Murrow could not have foreseen. Public schools and institutions of higher education pulled away the veil. Educators devolved into indoctrinators committed to diminishing American exceptionalism, severing the connective tissue of Judeo-Christian values that defined its citizens, and challenging every societal boundary by seeking to normalize transgenderism, relativism (the end of delineating between right and wrong) and climate-change hysteria. Despite progress toward diminishing racial inequality made by the civil rights movement, the mantra among educators increasingly was moving toward dismissing the U.S. as irredeemably and systemically racist to its core.
This was the precursor of a cultural shift across mass media. Newsrooms and television studios gradually became infested by graduates of these institutions, today’s editors, producers and reporters who view journalism through an activist lens. As the Democrats moved further Left, the media went with them, no longer inspired by the objective nobility of their journalistic forefathers — Murrow, Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, John Chancellor and Charles Kuralt, et al.
The election of Barack Hussein Obama in 2008 opened the floodgates of a newly emboldened state-run media, not beholden to scrutinizing the powerful but more prone than ever to fawning over Obama’s “fundamental transformation” of America and enabling those in his orbit to increase their power.
The zenith of Obama’s iron boot control over a compliant and corrupt media came amid the 2012 election cycle during a debate between Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney, aka, the Candy Crowley debate. The media had spent weeks running interference for the Obama-Hillary Clinton debacle in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, when four Americans died amid a terror attack on the U.S. embassy. During an October debate moderated by CNN’s Crowley, Romney seized on the Obama administration’s refusal to acknowledge the coordinated assault as an act of terror. Crowley jumped to Obama’s defense on live television. “(Obama) did call it an act of terror,” she said. (In reality, Obama and Clinton shamelessly blamed the attack on a viral internet video beyond their control).
That debate, artfully choreographed by CNN, enabled Obama to move the race from a dead heat to a decisive victory (332 electoral votes to Romney’s 206) despite his tepid approval rating (46%), high unemployment (8.3%) and growing contempt toward ObamaCare. Of course to have used these realities against Obama would have been dismissed as “racist”, which is what the Left often said about Limbaugh and his millions of loyal listeners.
It is sadly ironic that Limbaugh passed away just as alternative media was beginning to take root in the aftermath of Trump’s 2016 dismantling of Hillary Clinton’s coronation. Trump became the first president to recognize the utility of social media, going after his adversaries and corrupt media outlets with his so-called “mean tweets” using Twitter (before he was blackballed by the tech elites).
But this alternate media landscape was coming rapidly to the fore as critical thinkers (Conservatives) watched Trump Derangement Syndrome transform The Atlantic magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC and, to a lesser degree, Fox News, into naked appendages of the Left. The corner was turned during pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates, and the ascension of Joe Biden to the White House by precise leveraging of COVID hysteria.
The mainstream media overlords were dismissive of Steve Bannon’s War Room, and the Joe Rogans, Dinesh D’Souzas, Charlie Kirks, Sebastian Gorkas and Dan Bonginos expanding audience across the live streaming spectrum. By the time Trump launched his bid for re-election, millions of MAGA faithful were tuning into Newsmax, the Real America’s Voice network, Rumble and, more recently, the Tucker Carlson Network, where the likes of Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sat down for lengthy, granular interviews.
Trump’s campaign recognized the influence of alternative outlets, most notably Rogan’s vast audience. A three-hour interview with Rogan attracted a seismic 45 million views on You Tube, and 25 millions across Spotify and other platforms (The Wall Street Journal, November 8, 2024). Trump also did 90 minutes of live-streamed chat with a video gamer phenom named Adin Ross (at the behest of Trump’s teen son, Barron). Across all of 2024, Trump was a guest on 20 podcasts, the Journal reports. (Kamala Harris dodged Rogan altogether).
The net effect of this dramatic shift raises a question future Republican presidential candidates must ask: Why would I consent to a network controlled, prime time television debate with a Democrat ever again? Answer: You wouldn’t. You shouldn’t. Consider this stunning data point. The Journal, citing the Associated Press VoteCast survey, notes that Trump got the support of 56% of male voters ages 18 to 29. Where do these youngsters go for news and analysis? TikTok and podcasts. Period.
The TV networks are bleeding viewers and that erosion was bad news for the Harris-Biden bid for reelection. CNN’s prime time lineup does not even reach one million households (it has fallen to 792,000), and its viewers’ median age is 69. MSNBC’s 1.3 million prime time household audience has a median age of 70. These folks have likely never have heard of Rogan, Kirk and their media peers.
The Journal’s Kimberley Strassel observes that the media’s fierce defense of the Left backfired this time because “a narrative full of fantasy enabled Democrats to live in a world disconnected from the mood and worries of the country”, which were laser focused on the economy, illegal immigration and the absurdity of men competing in women’s sports.
In the aftermath of Trump’s resounding comeback win on November 5, there is something else to celebrate (and relish). Think about it. The smug network bastards who despise 80 million-plus Americans who voted for Trump/MAGA — Jake Tapper, Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid, Anderson Cooper, Margaret Brennan and David Muir, along with many others — are hurtling toward complete irrelevance. It’s over.
Morrow foresaw this moment coming.
“This instrument (television) can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire,” he said in 1958. “But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it’s nothing but wires and lights in a box.”
