Of all the institutions that have failed us in past years, none has been worse than the media. I am specifically referring to the news organizations and not those who clearly identify themselves as opinion journalism. I have no issue with a Morning Joe, Rachel Maddow, Sean Hannity, or Laura Ingraham who are at least honestly bringing their points of view to their programming. I am, however, faulting the traditional news stations (ABC, CBS, NBC) and folks like Jake Tapper and Wolf Blitzer who pretend to be objective.
These organizations are guilty of acts of omission as well as commission.
Go back to Covid and the lack of curiosity about the origins of the disease. They just blindly followed wherever Anthony Fauci led them. There was sparse reporting of the Great Barrington declaration where a significant number of respected scientists proposed a different perspective on how Covid should be handled. The media took their marching orders from Fauci and barely acknowledged a legitimate dissent that turned out to be correct.
Fast forward to the obvious cognitive decline of President Biden. This was fairly evident even during the 2020 election but became more obvious during his term. Where was the investigation and reporting? Instead, the media basically covered up for him until it became undeniable to the entire population after the debate this past June. Had the media done its job, it is likely that Democrats would have insisted on a proper primary where multiple candidates would have been vetted. Kamala Harris would not have been the choice of Democratic primary voters. Harris would have had to better delineate her positions and her rationale for changing so many of them. Even Tim Walz didn't get properly vetted by the press. They jumped all over J.D. Vance's old comment about cat ladies but didn't pursue many of Walz's radical positions and clear falsehoods regarding his résumé.
There are many more examples but I will just add one more. The total lack of reporting and curiosity about what was really going on at the southern border was beyond the pale. The flow of 10 to 20 million illegal immigrants was barely reported for three years until, again, the ramifications were becoming evident to too many people. Where were the nightly photos of immigrants from some very dangerous places flooding over the Rio Grande? If you looked at a few conservative outlets you were aware of it. If you only looked at the traditional media, you weren't. They just reported the obvious misinformation coming from the administration that the border was secure.
We should demand better from the press. They can't understand why the public holds them in such low esteem but they have earned the current lack of trust. I will end on a bright note. It was refreshing to see Jeff Bezos, who is a hardcore Democrat, acknowledge in a Washington Post op-ed that the media bias is real and they have to do a better job. The employees who left to protest that the Post didn't endorse Harris probably did the paper a big favor as maybe they can get sanity where it doesn't exist in their newsroom. Had they done a better job in their news pages of reporting all the news and not coloring so many stories in one direction, they would have earned the credibility to make a political endorsement.