America’s corporate media outlets reported on March 16 that former President Donald Trump promised a “bloodbath” in the United States if he isn’t reelected president in November.
The latest cycle of news, say media observers and conservative press critics, is evidence of both the media’s longstanding general bias against President Trump and its growing rejection of objectivity.
“We’re going to put a 100 percent tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you’re not going to be able to sell those guys—if I get elected,” President Trump said. “Now, if I don’t get elected. ... It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.”
“Mr. Trump once more doubled down on the doomsday vision of the country,” New York Times staffers Anjali Huynh and Michael Gold wrote in a March 16 campaign trail article. “Mr. Trump delivered a discursive speech, replete with attacks and caustic rhetoric.”
“Trump warning, while discussing the economy, that there would be a ‘bloodbath’ if he is not reelected in November,” she reported.
Less Reporting, More Editorializing
In an interview, Jon Nicosia, president and CEO of Washington-based consultancy News Cycle Media LLC, compared the mainstream media’s pursuit of President Trump to Herman Melville’s monomaniacal Captain Ahab and his white whale.“The media has a hatred for him that is so deep that ... they are going to do everything they can to not see him win again,” he told The Epoch Times.
Mr. Nicosia, formerly with Mediaite LLC and the Independent Journal Review, described a media environment in which reporters, editors, and publishers are comfortable with interweaving their own opinions into their coverage and interpreting what they think someone such as President Trump “really means” when he speaks.
“If you wish to step back ... and look at the art of journalism, you might come to the conclusion that basically journalism, especially the mainstream, has just morphed into political advocacy groups for either side,” he said.
Emily Jashinsky, director of the National Journalism Center at the conservative organization Young America’s Foundation, was more direct.
Falling Trust, Readership
In October 2023, Gallup Inc. published a report on its opinion polling that found that more than one-third—39 percent—of U.S. adults have no trust “at all” in the mass media.In response to the question “In general, how much trust and confidence do you have in the mass media—such as newspapers, TV, and radio—when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately, and fairly,” most U.S. adults said they have little or no trust in the media. Only 32 percent of respondents said they have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust.
When Gallup first asked Americans that question in 1972, nearly 70 percent of them said they trusted the media. In that era of U.S. journalism, Mr. Nicosia said, bias in reporting or publishing was punishable with termination.
As recently as 2005, he said, longtime “CBS Evening News” anchor Dan Rather was pushed out of the organization after he anchored a story on CBS’s “60 Minutes” criticizing former President George W. Bush’s time in the Texas Air National Guard that was later found to be fabricated.
Today, television ratings and online page views, rather than factuality and public trust, are at the top of mind for most media organizations, Mr. Nicosia said.
In an email to The Epoch Times, Curtis Houck, managing editor of The Media Research Center’s conservative media watchdog NewsBusters, called the “bloodbath” news cycle the “first real scalding-hot meltdown of the 2024 general election on the part of the liberal media.”
“They’re beyond desperate to drive eyeballs to their dying newscasts, so they have no qualms about twisting what was clearly a riff,” he said. “It’s all about sensationalism and pulling in voters who are on the fence or could somehow be swayed to vote for Biden.”
Mr. Nicosia said both left-wing and right-wing media are guilty of editorializing. However, when right-wing media covers stories that other outlets ignore, the mainstream media’s dismissal of newsworthy topics “looks so glaring” to the average reader.
Newspapers are doing the worst, according to Pew. In the 1990s, more than 60 million Americans subscribed to a daily newspaper. In 2022, there were about 21 million subscribers.
“The American people are not buying what the legacy media is selling,” Jason Meister, a Republican political strategist close to President Trump, wrote in a text message to The Epoch Times.
“The last 72 hours have been a horrific news cycle for the legacy media. Some might call it a bloodbath.”
