The mainstream media retains power for a reason
Most people reading this understand the issues with the mainstream media. We all know they’re biased and they’re not really even pretending not to be anymore. Instead, they talk about how it’s a moral obligation for them to determine the truth, not just report the facts.
It might not seem like that big of a deal until you realize that they believe their perception of things is the complete and absolute truth. They’re telling you that they’re going to report their perceptions so they can tell you what to think.
And yet, they keep on getting away with it.
Why? Why are they allowed to continue this perversion of journalism with little challenge, even from the right-leaning media?
Well, let’s ask Paula Bolyard. Paula was my editor when I contributed to PJ Media and I thoroughly enjoyed working with her. I just had more opportunity to write at Bearing Arms, so that ended up with more of my focus, among other things.
Yet Paula, writing about the Trump trial, got into the weeds a bit about how the media has a massive stranglehold on the coverage and coverage in general.
This is nothing new, but I'd hoped that we'd made more progress by now. PJ Media (then Pajamas Media) was one of the first websites to break through the control that media gatekeepers held over reporting in the United States. In fact, we were the first non-mainstream-media organization to have a booth at a Republican National Convention. That was back in 2008, and we all believed we were seeing a paradigm shift in media. No longer would the gatekeepers control the news and the narrative. The internet democratized things, giving start-up sites and mommy bloggers alike a voice. It was revolutionary in many ways.
But then we look at the Trump trial, and it feels like we're right back where we started. PJ Media doesn't have a seat at the trial, nor do you, Normal American. So we sit and wait for news to trickle out and hope they're not lying to us. It's disconcerting, to say the least. Terrifying if you think too hard about it.
The other story that caught my eye is one that our own VodkaPundit wrote about here. A pretentious reporter from The Atlantic (redundant, I know) described his experience sailing on the inaugural voyage of the "Icon of the Seas," the largest and arguably most extravagant cruise ship ever to hit the high seas. All he could do was weep and complain about the trip, for which his employer presumably shelled out $19,000—half the annual salary of one of The Atlantic's 700 employees!
I can only dream of having a budget like that, let alone 700 employees, to cover important stories and expose corruption in our government and elsewhere. It's absolutely insane the resources these left-wing echo chambers have. PJ Media only has two full-time staffers—Chris Queen and me—and two part-time employees. The bulk of the writing is done by contractors who are paid way less than they're worth. Nevertheless, we're able to publish an average of 30 stories a day! We're grateful for the hundreds of readers who have taken up for us and supported our work by becoming VIP members.
I’ve been one of those “contractors who are paid way less than they're worth” before, and yeah, allow me to tell you that it’s not very much at all. Many of them have other jobs and just bang out a few pieces a week. I suspect I was one of the few trying to support a family exclusively based on my writing. I didn’t do it because there was some massive sum. I just made up for it in volume.
And now, Bearing Arms and PJ Media are owned by the same people, Salem Media, a company that I have a lot of respect for as an entity and has given me opportunities that I desperately needed.
Yet the truth of the matter is that PJ Media, RedState, Townhall, Twitchy, Hot Air, and Bearing Arms all fall under an umbrella, but combined, all of them lack the resources of one The Atlantic.
There’s absolutely no chance Bearing Arms will pay for me to take a $19,000 cruise, even if it were relevant to what we cover.
And Salem is one of the big dogs in right-leaning media, relatively speaking.
Yet let’s talk about the bigger dogs. I’m talking about those who have not just a web presence but also a cable TV presence. I’m talking about Fox News, One America, and Newsmax.
Of those three, only Fox News rivals the typical left-leaning, mainstream media. They’re an absolute beast when it comes to resources, supposedly boasting more than 22,000 employees.
Yet that’s it. One America News Network had, as of 2021, 150 employees. I couldn’t find hard numbers for Newsmax, but their LinkedIn profile says between 201 and 500 employees.
So those two networks combined have fewer people on the payroll than The Atlantic.
The Washington Examiner is listed as the second-most visited website on the right. They have 117 employees.
Again, far less than The Atlantic.
Where am I going with this? Well, the simple fact is that even if The Atlantic is willing to waste $19,000 to send a journalist on a luxury cruise they're incapable of appreciating and still keep 700 employees on the payroll, then clear they have more resources than we do.
While PJ Media made inroads back in 2008 with gaining mainstream acceptance, the truth is that the resources just haven’t followed. That’s because many of them are propped up with other endeavors, those apparently far more profitable than Salem Media’s network of radio stations, which are typically drawing from a similar well of voters.
Think about it for a moment. MSNBC was a joint venture of NBC and Microsoft, now primarily owned by NBC itself. While the news division for NBC is what it always was, it’s propped up by profits from the whole of NBC Universal. Even if you ignore NBC or MSNBC entirely, you’re still keeping things going because you watch reruns of Friends.
CNN is owned by Warner Brothers Discovery, which means every Bugs Bunny cartoon can offset any shortfalls felt due to people being sick of CNN’s bias.
What’s more, they can afford to invest in growth strategies that simply don’t exist for most of us, which allows them to maintain a certain degree of control. Couple that with cozy, long-lasting relationships with public officials which give them exclusive leaks, favorable access, and admission to an important trial with national implications and they can afford to slough off journalistic integrity.
After all, none of us are on your TV every night. We have to be either sought out or found by dumb luck, and I appreciate every single one of you regardless of which camp you’re in.
They retain power because we don’t have the same resources with which to pry it from their hands.
Trust in the media is low, but they’re also the ones there in your face every single day, not us. Until we can change that or at least make the alternatives just as easy, we don’t have a hope in hell of ending the stranglehold the mainstream media has on the mainstream.
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