Axios Admits Establishment Media Lost Control of Election Narrative

The establishment media’s control over framing the election narrative is “shattered,” Axios’s Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen acknowledged Monday.

The report confirms Gallup polling that shows Americans’ trust in the media is at an all-time low. For years, the media has pushed false narratives that involved Hunter Biden’s laptop story, Russian collusion, the source of the 2020 pandemic, the January 6 investigation, and numerous other hoaxes.

Breitbart News’s John Nolte catalogued this list of media hoaxes:

• Russia Collusion Hoax
• Hands Up, Don’t Shoot Hoax
• Jussie Smollett Hoax
• Covington KKKids Hoax
• Very Fine People Hoax
• Seven-Hour Gap Hoax
• Russian Bounties Hoax
• Trump Trashes Troops Hoax
• Policemen Killed at Mostly Peaceful January 6 Protest Hoax
• Rittenhouse Hoax
• Eating While Black Hoax
• Border Agents Whipping Illegals Hoax
• NASCAR Noose Hoax
• The Georgia Jim Crow 2.0 Hoax
• Trump Assaulted Secret Service Agents and Grabbed Steering Wheel of Beast Hoax
• MAGA Assaulted Paul Pelosi Hoax
• COVID Lab Leak Theory Is Racist Hoax
• Hunter Biden’s Laptop Is Russian Disinformation Hoax
• Joe Biden Will Never Ban Gas Stoves Hoax
• COVID Deaths are Over-Counted Is a Conspiracy Theory Hoax
• Mass Graves of Native Children in Canada Hoax
• The Trump Killed All the Fish Hoax
• Trump Told People to Drink Bleach Hoax
• Hamas Hospital Hoax
• If Reelected, Trump Will Execute People Hoax
• The Alfa Bank Hoax
• Libs of TikTok Murdered Non-Binary Teen Hoax
• The Aaron Rodgers Sandy Hook-Truther Hoax
• The ‘Bloodbath’ Hoax

The establishment media’s “dominance in narrative- and reality-shaping in presidential elections shattered in 2024,” due to the rise of alternative media in the era of new technology, streaming services, podcasts, and the liberated platform of X, VandeHei and Allen reported:

Both campaigns have targeted small, often little-appreciated shards to reach hyper-specific pockets of potential voters. The campaigns are doing this with unorthodox, sometimes lengthy media appearances and precision ad targeting.

• Former President Trump reached way more potential male voters with his three-hour Rogan conversation (33 million views over the weekend) than he could have with a dozen or more appearances on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC combined. All three cable news networks skew very old in viewership, with median ages ranging from 67 to 70.

• Vice President Kamala Harris reached more young women on Alex Cooper’s “Call Her Daddy” podcast, a show about sex and relationships, than she could on CBS’ “60 Minutes” and ABC’s “The View” combined. Both shows skew very old, too.

Americans’ trust in the establishment media to report current events “fully, accurately and fairly” plummeted to a record low in 2024, Gallup polling found in October. Only 31 percent of Americans have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the media to tell the truth, one point below its low watermark of 32 percent in 2016 and 2023.

Gallup reported its findings:

Americans continue to register record-low trust in the mass media, with 31% expressing a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the media to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly,” similar to last year’s 32%. Americans’ trust in the media — such as newspapers, television and radio — first fell to 32% in 2016 and did so again last year.

For the third consecutive year, more U.S. adults have no trust at all in the media (36%) than trust it a great deal or fair amount. Another 33% of Americans express “not very much” confidence.

…

As has been the case historically, partisans have different levels of confidence in the media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly. Currently, 54% of Democrats, 27% of independents and 12% of Republicans say they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media. Independents’ trust matches the record low in 2022, while Democrats’ and Republicans’ are statistically similar to their historical low points.

Americans’ trust in the media in the 1970s ranged from the low 70s to the high 60s but sank to the low 50s in the Bush administration. During the Obama administration, it hovered above 40 percent and tanked to its lowest mark with the rise of former President Donald Trump.

Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.