It’s become a truism in the past few years that younger people get their news predominantly, if not entirely, from social media. Turns out it’s true, but it may not be an information crisis, as some would have you believe.
Of course, as an old-time newspaperman, I was one of those who thought that the country was not being served well by this increasing dependency on unvetted news sources and the implied repudiation of traditional media. How could the country survive if the next generations turned their back on the trusted voices of the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, NBC, ABC, and “the most trusted name in news” – CNN?
But that was my opinion before Donald Trump was elected president and the legacy media exposed itself for being exactly what Trump said it had become – Fake News. The young people of America may not realize that their distrust of mainstream media was anticipated by Donald Trump, but the more that the old media voices expose their own bias, the closer together Trump and the young men and women of America are getting.
A recent Pew Research Center poll found that 86% of adults between the ages of 18 and 29 prefer to get their news from digital devices. Comparatively, only 8% of that same age group prefers television as their main news source, 2% prefer radio, and 3% prefer newspapers.
The Pew poll also reveals that the youngest adults are not relying entirely on digital devices as their news sources. Although nine out of 10 say they get some of their news from digital devices, nearly half also get some news from TV, 27% from radio, and 18% from newspapers. So if they are rejecting traditional news media, it is not from ignorance but from familiarity.
It should be obvious to anyone paying attention that the mainstream news has tilted so far left that they have almost no point of contact with mainstream America. The disgusting bias against not just Trump but against any conservatives or Republicans is so obvious that fair-minded people can’t make excuses any longer. The latest evidence was the appalling behavior of the ABC moderators of the Sept. 10 debate between Trump and Kamala Harris. Whether the anti-Trump slant was intentional or just the result of institutional bias, it proved young people right to look elsewhere for honest news.
Even more significant than the debate itself was the follow-up. If you as a viewer had noticed (and who couldn’t?) the way ABC moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis aggressively fact-checked Trump, sometimes incorrectly, and let Harris slide on obvious lies such as the “both sides” hoax, you probably tuned in to the post-debate panels on TV expecting the so-called media experts to set the record straight.
But they didn’t. If the post-debate analysis in June had doomed the candidacy of Joe Biden, the punditry in September was immediately and relentlessly pro-Harris, largely ignoring the assist that ABC had given her.
“Devastating,” said Chris Wallace on CNN, claiming that Harris had virtually eliminated Trump as a viable candidate. “Trump got destroyed,” said Joy Reid on MSNBC. Even Brit Hume on Fox said conclusively, “Trump had a bad night.”
But if, on the other hand, you had been accessing news from YouTube, you would have seen an immediate backlash against ABC. Most ferocious was Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News and NBC newswoman, who now runs her own show on SiriusXM. Her extensive background in TV news gave her the credibility to decry the debate as a media disaster:
I am disgusted. I am ashamed of those moderators at ABC News. David Muir and Linsey Davis did exactly what their bosses wanted them to do. The head of ABC News, Dana Walden, is a close personal friend of Kamala Harris who is responsible for Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, meeting. They did Dana Walden’s bidding. It was three against one on the debate stage this evening…
This was a mistake to trust ABC News with this debate. The Republicans must learn from this mistake the same way the Democrats never agree to moderators they don’t entirely trust. This should be the last time the Republicans ever do this because those two moderators tried to sink Donald Trump tonight.
On X, Kelly wrote, “Why did the moderators need Kamala Harris there at all?” and “This is one of the most biased, unfair debates I have ever seen. Shame on you ABC.”
That last tweet garnered nearly 5 million views. That’s substantially more than CNN’s ratings for the entire debate, which hovered around 4.4 million.
A substantial percentage of CNN viewers probably abandoned the channel immediately after the debate when they heard Jake Tapper deliver a virtual eulogy for the Trump candidacy. Not all of them went to Megyn Kelly’s YouTube channel either, but more young people probably went there than the other TV networks, the New York Times, or the Wall Street Journal.
Kelly was not alone among the many alternative voices on YouTube that spoke out in favor of fairness. One of the most interesting features of social media websites is that they use an algorithm to steer news and videos to each user based on their interests. That means if you watch Kelly’s podcast, you will eventually see other conservative news sources directed to your feed.
In my case, it means that I now watch way more YouTube videos than Fox News shows. They range from the raw pro-Trump commentary of Benny Johnson, youthful activism from Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, the establishment point of view of Sean Spicer (Trump’s first press secretary) and radio host Hugh Hewitt, the numerical wizardry of the People’s Pundit (Rich Baris, a conservative pollster), and the multiple other pundits you would never hear of like Dr. Steve Turley (the Patriot Professor), the Body Language Guy (Jesus Enrique Rosas), and the Conservative Twins (black brothers who left the Democratic Party to join the growing trend of young black Republicans).
Trust me, I don’t miss either CNN or Fox News, which both have hidden agendas that come from corporate boardrooms. I would much rather watch news that mirrors the world I am seeing than watch news that is intended to convince me I didn’t see what was right in front of me.
Call it confirmation bias or call it truth-telling, but whatever you call it, the average person is going to seek out news sources that validate what we saw with our own eyes. Young people may be more skeptical of authority by nature, but people of any age will eventually tire of being told by mainstream media things that they know are not true – or even more often, omitting things they think you don’t need to know.
So take my challenge: Tune in to “The Megyn Kelly Show” every day for a week. If you don’t think you are better informed after that week than you have been in decades of following ABC, CBS, and the rest, feel free to retreat back into “The Media Matrix,” whose purpose is to manipulate, mislead, and manage the news.
At the start of our country, the free press was considered a vital component of our democracy – a watchdog that would keep honest the three branches of government and ensure the existence of an informed citizenry.
Those days are long over. Nowadays, the mainstream media’s function is to protect the government and guard the status quo, which is why the alternative media on YouTube, Rumble, and other platforms are so vital to protecting not only the government but our democracy. The answer to the question, “Who will watch the watchmen?” is obvious. It is the citizen journalists and exiled news reporters who reject the mainstream narrative and ask questions that challenge you to think for yourself.
Frank Miele, the retired editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Mont., is a columnist for RealClearPolitics. His book “The Media Matrix: What If Everything You Know Is Fake” is available from his Amazon author page. Visit him at HeartlandDiaryUSA.com or follow him on Facebook @HeartlandDiaryUSA and on X/Gettr @HeartlandDiary.
