Mark Meckler
Breaking news: leftist media reports that their lack of ability to control what you read is a “news desert” that caused the election of Donald Trump. The Washington Times reports on a Politico “Special Report”, which claims lower subscriptions to newspapers and the death of local news is why President Trump won. Here’s this –very creative — explanation for “Why Trump Won.”
In this case, Politico reviewed print newspaper subscription data and, “The results show a clear correlation between low [newspaper] subscription rates and Trump’s success in the 2016 election, both against Hillary Clinton and when compared to [Mitt] Romney in 2012 … That gives new force to the widely voiced concerns of news-industry professionals and academicians about Trump’s ability to make bold assertions about crime rates, unemployment and other verifiable facts without any independent checks.”
On its face, this is absurd, but “news industry professionals and academicians” have been triggered, compelling Politico to assume correlation implies causality. The overwrought effort declared Candidate Trump avoided mainstream outlets and as a result thrived because, “Voters in so-called news deserts — places with minimal newspaper subscriptions, print or online — went for him in higher-than-expected numbers.”
“News deserts?” Now that’s a new one. Usually, the media elites just refer to the non-urban areas of America as “red America” or “fly over country.” Now, we are “News Deserts,” if you’re trying to keep track of the most recent insult. But not everyone is buying this explanation, not even the liberals folks at Harvard:
The Neiman Journalism Lab at Harvard, which describes itself “an attempt to help journalism figure out its future in an Internet age,” also took serious issue with almost every aspect of the Politico report. In an analysis titled, “The Politico article on ‘news deserts’ doesn’t really show what it claims to show,” they noted, “It is just ahistorical to say Trump’s campaign ‘succeeded in avoiding mainstream outlets.’ Candidate Trump gave tons of interviews throughout the primaries! And when he scaled those back in the general, one of his strategic shifts was shifting from national to local media! Whatever perfectly legitimate criticisms you want to make about how the media covered Trump, to say Trump “avoided” coverage in mainstream outlets is just … wrong.”
We do know that newspaper subscription rates have declined, but the claim that areas without subscriptions to hardcopy newspaper are “news deserts” is absurd. One of the reason hardcopy subscription rates are down is because of the Internet making that information freely accessible. This is, indeed, an issue for every print entity, not just news-based.
The Internet also has, in fact, brought more news and information to Americans who normally wouldn’t have access to a wide variety of information. But Politico’s claim of a news desert is based in the argument that only a select few legacy news outlets, which also provided columnists and news stories to local newspapers, are real, actual news.
Exactly. During this election, people had access to a variety of opinions instead of a single, unified leftist narrative… and the journalists just can’t stop fretting over it.
Let’s drink a toast to the demise of the leftist media oligarchy in America. May it proceed with all due haste.
Hat Tip: Washington Times
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