The Media Is at the Height of Its Power and Aren't at all Scared that Their Influence has been Slipping for Decades and is now Undeniable

I mean, just look at CNN!

CNN's full-scale collapse continues rapidly. It reaches a remarkable new low led by @kaitlancollins and @abbydphillip: fewer than 500,000 viewers total in prime-time! That's almost impossible to do even if you wanted it.

Also, they're well below 100k for viewers under 55. pic.twitter.com/4gG4jMWBTH

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 27, 2025

Okay, sure, CNN is doing badly. They promised and promised and promised their viewers that Trump was going to end up in jail and Kamala was going to be president. But that's no reason to tune them out, right?

They said it. That makes it happen, right? It's not like people have decided to tune out televised news to a large extent, leaving only a minority who even turn it on, much less are convinced by it, and it's not like their viewership is very, very old, or anything.

Oh wait, I've been informed that all of those things are true. Too bad.

Next, the press told itself that it's very serious and very important and that it's just unfortunate that Biden's aides were able to trick them into thinking Biden was in great shape:

.@AlexThomp: "President Biden's decline and its coverup by the people around him is a reminder that every White House regardless of party is capable of deception...We, myself included, missed a lot of this story and some people trust us less because of it." #whcd #nerdprom pic.twitter.com/L9CtbB3HIZ

— CSPAN (@cspan) April 27, 2025

I think we should give them medals. And raises. And to jail anyone who thinks they lied for several years about the health status of the most powerful man on the planet. It's not like they'd ever lie about anything else. Nope. They're just honest people who can be tricked into believing things that are obviously not true.

Wait...is that better?

I'm being informed that no, it's not, in fact, better.

For some reason, I'm reminded of the below clip from Steven Spielberg's 2017 movie, The Post where Ben Bradlee (played by Tom Hanks) explains how he was Jack Kennedy's friend and refused to run bad stories about him. He's going to make up for this journalistic malpractice by turning on Nixon, a man he already disagrees with, and try to destroy him.

That makes him a pure and good journalist, right? Hurting the people he wants to hurt anyway because he treated his friend too well?

Right?!

posted by TheJamesMadison at 04:44 PM

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