Liberal Media Meltdown

IT IS UNLIKELY that I would have been the only person to experience a perverse delight witnessing the liberal media meltdown at the emphatic re-election of Donald Trump on the morning of November 6.

The issue wasn’t so much the fact that, contrary to the prophecies of the poll pundits, the election didn’t lead to a nail-biting finish that would have left the world at the mercy of the unhurried schedules of local administrators in Nevada and Arizona. A counting process that was expected to take at least 48, if not 72, hours ended up declaring the results in very good time. Underestimating the efficiency of the local administrations was the least of the media’s follies.

Nor should we hold it against the pollsters that they misread the mood of the seven swing states that would have determined the outcome. The polls were right insofar as the true- Blue states gave a plurality of votes to Vice President Kamala Harris and the Red states kept their faith in President-elect Tump. It was the outcome in the seven states that was in doubt. Where the polls erred was in suggesting that the contest in these seven states was intense and the outcome could go either way. Unfortunately for them, the outcome in the swing states left no scope for doubt. It was Trump all the way.

Since I followed the opinion polls through an independent poll aggregator that also underlined the methodological strengths and shortcomings of all the polls, the outcome came as no real surprise. For at least a fortnight prior to voting day, it had become quite clear that Trump was steadily inching ahead of Harris in all the seven states. It was also pointed out that many pollsters were quite wilfully increasing the proportion of women and minority voters in the final sample to bolster the Democratic Party numbers. In polite language, they were trying to fix the opinion polls in the hope that a positive projected outcome for Harris would create a momentum of its own.

It was the blatant partisanship of the so-called legacy media which had decided from Day 1 of the campaign that Trump had to be stopped, which was a defining feature of the 2024 US presidential election. Recall the fuss that was made by the so-called journalists of Washington Post and Los Angeles Times about their proprietors preventing a formal endorsement of Harris and you will realise why these so-called ‘quality papers’ had ended up as Harris campaign broadsheets.

Today, when inner-party recrimination has become the norm, different shades of paid-up Democrats are pinning responsibility for Trump’s victory on President Joe Biden. If only, it is being suggested, the president had acknowledged the debilitating effects of his creeping dementia earlier on and gracefully stepped down, Harris would have had an opportunity of establishing herself politically earlier. Maybe, that is an accurate assessment. The question remains: why did the media wilfully look the other way and give Biden a fitness certificate when it was clear that the president was not fully in control of all his faculties? Indeed, even after the debate with Trump exposed the extent of the president’s sad decline, the ‘legacy media’ remained mealy-mouthed in its concern over a potentially non-functioning White House. Was the media true to the responsibilities that had been conferred on it by the first amendment of the US constitution? The answer is obvious.

Following the post-election liberal meltdown, it is becoming increasingly clear that the entrenched media is likely to face a growing irrelevance. The sheer partisanship and woke orientation of its journalists and presenters is forcing media consumers to vote with their feet. It is more than likely that in the coming days we are likely to see more and more people switch their preferences to podcasts and YouTube channels that provide targeted information (not to mention endless choice).

You would have imagined that a crisis of this magnitude would have prompted a much-needed introspection in the ranks of the entitled liberals. Banish the thought. Just watch CNN/BBC, or better still, read the despatches of the Times of India’s Washington correspondent to realise that life goes on as if nothing ever happened. Trump is being unendingly castigated for picking a cabinet made up of individuals whose sympathies are with the president on most issues. This election was fought by Trump to secure a decisive mandate for a course correction in matters such as immigration, economic policy, foreign policy, and the whole gamut of woke issues. That mandate secured, the editorial classes now want him to adopt the discredited dogmas of liberalism.

About The Author

Swapan Dasgupta

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