The media owes Trump an apology and an about-face in his second term

With the presidential election now mercifully over, and with a decisive victory for Donald Trump, it’s a good time to mull the steep decline of our mainstream media — and consider how the industry could attempt to recover.Step 1: Apologize.A Gallup poll in October found that a meager 31% of Americans trust the mass media “to report the news ‘fully, accurately and fairly’” — an all-time low.It’s surprising the number is even that high, after the media relentlessly characterized a candidate who is on the path to overwhelmingly win the presidency into some fringe figure — a racist and a tyrant.Clearly Americans didn’t buy it.Instead, they re-elected Trump in a rout.He is owed an apology — as are his voters.Much of our so-called mainstream media has openly become an activist operation for Democrats.

It seeps into everything they do.How can it not? A 2023 study out of Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications found that “just 3.4% of American journalists identify as Republicans.”National Public Radio’s Washington, DC, headquarters has “87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans.None,” The Free Press reported in April.Of course, news outlets can choose to represent any positions they’re inclined to.

But perhaps it would be good if they were more honest about it.If The New York Times wants to be a wholly left-leaning paper, it needs to give up the charade that it’s trying to represent all sides or report the news in a dispassionate way.Take the paper’s headline the day after the election: “Stunning Return to Power After Dark and Defiant Campaign.”Did we watch the same appearances these last few weeks, where Trump served fries and rode around in a garbage truck? What was dark, where was the defiance?After Trump shocked many by defeating Hillary Clinton in 2016, the term “media bubble” arose to explain journalists’ astounding level of surprise.Politico called that Trump ...