The Demise of the Mainstream Media
Thanks to Donald Trump’s revolutionary campaign strategy of near-exclusive focus on internet media, Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and self-immolation, the dominant ninety-year run of the self-styled “mainstream media” ended with the 2024 presidential election, alongside its legacy of being the cheerleaders and propaganda arm of the American Left and an increasingly radicalized Democrat Party.
The mainstream media can trace its beginning to Franklin Roosevelt. It was given birth with the passage of the Communications Act of 1934 and the creation of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), thus placing control of the electronic media under the thumb of the federal government. The FCC’s primary function was to restrain competition. Consequently, three well-financed and Roosevelt-allied networks ended up with a virtual national monopoly on the dissemination of news broadcast over the radio, and eventually television, airwaves for the next 50 years and maintained a near monopoly for another 30 years.
Not to be outdone, the Democrat-leaning members of the print media, in order to ingratiate themselves with Roosevelt, assumed even greater notoriety and dominance by cooperating with a fascist-sympathizing Roosevelt Administration and the Democrat Party in abetting their heavy-handed treatment of any opposition media. Thus, the favored print media, together with the administration, succeeded in their quest for dominance by driving numerous publications into bankruptcy or obscurity.
It was then that the issue of fairness in reporting the news began to be bandied about in reaction to the near monopolistic status of what we now refer to as the mainstream media. Consequently, the management of the leading newspapers, magazines, and broadcast networks found it necessary to initiate the mantra that their profession was the epitome of credibility and integrity. All the while they were unabashedly promoting Franklin Roosevelt and his big-government agenda, marking the beginning of nine decades of a bedfellow relationship between the media and the Democrat Party.
The dominant players in the media willingly became de facto accomplices with not........
© American Thinker
