Last Jan. 6, 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.” Maybe it’s because they watched as many in the media promoted the theory that Trump had engaged in a criminal conspiracy with Russia to steal the 2016 election — and then, even after special counsel Robert Mueller III concluded that Trump had not done so, continued to deny that Mueller had cleared him.

Maybe it’s because, after the false conspiracy narrative failed to bring Trump down, they watched as the media cheer-led Trump’s first impeachment trial — even though half of Americans did not believe his phone call with Ukraine’s president warranted removal from office.

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.” Or perhaps it’s because they saw what CBS News’ John Dickerson called the media’s “hysterical” coverage of Trump, which he compared to weather reporters who hype every coming storm, only to see them peter out. As Dickerson told Hugh Hewitt, the media can’t blame Trump for its lack of credibility. “The press did all that good work ruining its reputation on its own.”

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. But journalists had so discredited themselves with years of hostile, hyperventilating coverage of Trump that millions no longer trusted them to objectively report the truth. They figured, reporters got the Trump-russia relationship and so many other stories so wrong — why should we trust them on this?

So, 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 do what Republican election officials, state legislators, judges, justices and even the vice president were able to do after the November election — 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.