WHEN OUR INSTITUTIONS HELD, EXCEPT THE MEDIA
WASHINGTON — As we reflect on the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, here is the good news: Our democracy was never in danger, because our institutions held. State election officials, including Republicans who supported President Donald Trump, did the right thing. So did GOP governors and state legislators, who refused Trump’s demands they appoint new electors. So did the courts, including judges and justices appointed by Trump who rejected Trump’s legal challenges. So did Vice President Mike Pence, who resisted Trump’s pressure and fulfilled his constitutional duties. So, ultimately, did Congress, which certified the election results once the rioters were finally cleared from the building.
But one institution did fail us: the news media.
At the time of the riot, a Post-ABC News poll found that 70% of Republicans believed Trump’s claims that Biden’s win was illegitimate. And a year later, multiple polls show that belief has not diminished. How can that be? Trump’s claims have been thoroughly examined and discredited. Nearly every court case Trump brought was rejected not just on procedural grounds, but on examination of the facts. Even his own attorney general, William Barr, said there was no “fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.” And yet millions of Americans still believe the election was stolen.
Why is that? Because trust in the news media — the institution that is supposed to be our neutral arbiter of truth — lies in tatters.
A recent Gallup poll finds just 7% of U.S. adults say they have “a great deal” of trust in the media, while 63% have “not very much” trust or “none at all.” In January 2021 — the very moment we needed an objective news media to separate fact from fiction — an Edelman poll found that 59% of Americans believed “journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations,” and 59% said “most news organizations are more concerned with supporting an ideology or political position than with informing the public.”
Maybe the reason so many feel that way is because they watched supposedly objective journalists push the discredited, Clinton campaign-funded Steele Dossier — a scandal Axios called one of “the most egregious journalistic errors in modern history.”
Perhaps it was the dismissal of the Wuhan lab leak theory by many in the media and the marginalization of its proponents as crackpots. Or the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, and its dismissal as Russian disinformation. Or the widespread depictions of rioting, looting and arson as “mostly peaceful” protests.
Maybe it was watching CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta declare on national television that “this White House has an unhealthy fixation on what I call the 3 M’s: the Mexicans, the Muslims and the media.”
No doubt Trump fed the distrust, railing against “fake news.” But too many in the media validated his claims by delivering “fake news.” So, when Trump told the “big lie” — claiming the election was stolen — many Americans no longer believed the media when they said it wasn’t true. Yes, some media voices amplified Trump’s claim, and many Republican lawmakers amplified it or declined to challenge it.
When we find, a year after the Capitol riot, that more than 70% of Republicans still believe Trump’s claims that the election was stolen, that is not a failure on the part of those Americans. It is the media’s failure. It is a direct result of four years of a collective loss of objectivity on the part of the media establishment. Too many journalists failed to put aside their political biases and do their jobs.
Our democracy survived Trump’s malfeasance on Jan. 6. But the damage done by the media’s malfeasance is real and lasting. They squandered the trust of the American people — and in so doing, they share responsibility for the horrific events of Jan. 6.