Corporate media is the biggest loser in the 2024 GOP primary.
The Corporate Media Will Be the Biggest Loser in the Republican Primary
Recent events suggest that the corporate media will be the biggest loser in the unfolding Republican presidential primary. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ presidential announcement in a live Twitter spaces event with Elon Musk and David Sacks on Wednesday night offered a glimpse of how candidates can reach audiences in a post-cable world. Without the gatekeeping of media activists, DeSantis had the chance to tell Americans his unfiltered opinions about issues such as the border crisis, woke corporatism, the threat of cancellation, digital currencies, and bureaucratic overreach.
DeSantis didn’t have to go through a partisan hack at The New York Times or Politico, who would inevitably ask an unsubstantive, bad-faith question. Anyone who wanted to hear what he had to say didn’t have to rely on unserious headlines to convey substantive news values like DeSantis’ signing of a bill that blocks taxpayer-funded “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs at state universities.
While parts of DeSantis’ livestream interview Wednesday could be justly critiqued as boring, it was more substantive than anything the propaganda press has produced about the GOP primary or its growing cast of candidates. The subject matter was far better than the questions CNN threw at Trump in the network’s recent town hall.
Moreover, the fact that a serious discussion of relevant issues could verge on the uninteresting reflects most poorly on the deeply unserious media environment we have come to expect. Cable news and social media reward soundbites; DeSantis’ Twitter space sounded more like what a candidate interview might have been a few decades ago. With the corrupt press on the sidelines in the GOP primary, voters can expect to hear a different perspective than the narrative promoted by the corporate media cabal — which is a very bad thing for media gatekeepers and a very good thing for candidates and voters.
It’s also worth acknowledging that DeSantis’ smart decision to circumvent traditional media might never have happened if Donald Trump had never run for president in 2016. That’s true not just about executive agenda-setting but also about Trump’s fight with the media. No Republican in 2016 earned the ire of the corporate press the way Trump did — and no one had ever been as effective at calling their partisan schtick as he saw it.
In like form, DeSantis has accurately taken to calling them the “corporate media,” rejecting the false notion that the legacy press still represents what “mainstream” Americans think.
The Shifting Media Landscape
Two recent developments make the shifting media landscape, and the Republican primary’s implications for it, even more fascinating. First, Tucker Carlson — whom a Gallup poll just crowned the most influential public figure in the country — was dismissed from Fox News, the one legacy media outlet that has traditionally been expected to represent right-leaning voters. Carlson looms large in the upcoming presidential race, and by announcing the launch of a new show hosted on Twitter, he’s committed to a new format where he’s racking up a massive audience. Meanwhile, his former employer is hemorrhaging viewership in the wake of his departure.
Second, a Harvard/Harris poll earlier this week revealed that majorities of Americans understand the Trump-Russia collusion narrative was a hoax, Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” was never Russian disinformation, and Joe Biden is implicated with his son in an “illegal influence peddling scheme” — three stories the media have refused to cover with either honesty or curiosity.
Trump and DeSantis are both wise to run their campaigns on their own terms, not the corporate media’s. Whichever Republican ends up facing Joe Biden in 2024, he will need to be adept at cutting through dishonest media framing and flat-out lies if he hopes to reach voters who aren’t on Twitter or Truth Social. That both men who currently lead the pack are already rejecting the media’s traditional monopoly on political conversations is a good sign.
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