Corporate Media’s Demise: Let Them Fall

Corporate Media’s Demise: Let Them Fall

The corporate or legacy media, which once reigned as the sole messenger of news and propaganda, is now faced with an existential crisis. While their dominance has been steadily declining over the last decade, the last couple of years have brought them down to their knees. Profits for the largest legacy media companies have halved and most have succumbed to mass layoffs and cost-cutting measures. The rise of alternative digital media has aided in the corporate media’s demise, with Tucker Carlson being a notable and recent example. After being fired from Fox in 2023, Carlson moved over to X, formally Twitter, to host his show and his viewership to this day continues to surpass most cable news networks, including Fox. While much of the corporate media have been silently riding the sinking ship, the 2024 election led some outlets to change course in a last-ditch effort for survival. It appears to have failed.

In an unexpected turn of events, various corporate media outlets backed out from endorsing presidential candidates days before the elections. The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the USA Today were the major legacy outlets that controversially announced their decisions not to endorse a presidential candidate. The announcements were controversial because they strayed from the norm. The USA Times endorsed Biden in 2020, for example, and both the LA Times and The Post endorsed both Biden in 2020 and Hillary Clinton in 2016. Everyone was naturally expecting these outlets to support Kamala Harris, who was the vice president during Biden’s administration. Their decision not to indicates two things: the times are changing, and they’re in panic mode to continue existing in an evolving political and economic climate.

The media outlets that decided against endorsing presidential candidates faced backlash from those who wanted them to endorse Kamala Harris. In other words, they’re people who want the corporate media to remain publicly aligned with and biased in favor of left-wing administration and policies, as they have been for many decades. The Atlantic, who endorsed Kamala Harris on October 10, 2024, framed the non-endorsing announcements as “preparing for a possible Trump victory by signaling a willingness to accommodate the coming administration rather than resist it.” This accusation is ironic, however, given that The Atlantic endorsed Kamala Harris, proving that they not only would have accommodated her administration but did outright support and defend it. If anything, not endorsing a candidate should be the neutral journalistic position. David Mastio, who was part of the USA Today’s endorsement of Biden in 2020, also expressed criticism of the decision, believing that Trump presents a threat to the “competency and credibility” of America’s democracy.

All the backlash evidently boils down to despising Trump and wanting the corporate media to remain publicly aligned with left-wing administrations. The journalism of mainstream media is not about being objective or speaking truth to power, but to maintain their unholy alliance with the regime. The bias has gotten so bad that it has evidently eaten into their coffers, leading the likes of Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Post, to come out and address the reality that most of the legacy media has been in denial of in his personal piece, headlined “The hard truth: Americans don’t trust the news.” Bezos outlined the fact that the media has polled abysmally when it comes to trust and reputation, and confessed that “something we are doing is clearly not working.” Following Bezos’s decision not to endorse a candidate, 250,000 subscribers canceled their subscriptions at The Washington Post. This humorously demonstrates the kind of audience that the legacy media has culminated over the decades – one that demands a publication parrot left-wing narratives and be publicly beholden to the Democratic Party – and why the corporate media is in so much trouble.

The last-second scrambling to not endorse presidential candidates as well as to grapple with the distrust of the media is an attempt to rehabilitate their image. But it’s too little too late. None of the lies that the corporate media has spread throughout the last few decades, which have often been in lockstep with the regime narrative, should be forgiven nor forgotten. No one ought to forgive nor forget the way that they lied the country into war, advocated for lockdowns and the segregation of the unvaccinated, and demonized over half of the population for their political beliefs. The legacy media deserve their demise, and their fall will make way for a new climate of independent and grassroots-driven media that is operated not by corporate or government interests but by journalistic passion.