It’s a terrifying thought, but it’s true: news channels control both political parties and, by extension, the entire country.
Think about it—how many candidates for office are cable-TV products, people who, if not for their appearances on cable news that align with their political ideology, you probably would never have heard of? I bet many of them, if not all.
I want to be gentle here. I know everyone has their favorite networks and shows, but do you really want a country run by people elected by the people who book those shows?
Would anyone outside of Florida know who Nikki Fried is if it weren’t for MSNBC promoting her as a grave challenge to Gov. Ron DeSantis? She’s the state agriculture commissioner, for God’s sake. Unless you farmed in Florida, you might have heard of her… and then just maybe. And yet she’s a candidate for governor of Florida next year, at least as far as the Democratic Party nomination goes.
There are also Republican examples. I assume there are other Senate candidates in Ohio than bestselling author J.D. Vance, but you would never know it by watching Fox. I have nothing against Vance or Fox, I just think candidates should be chosen by the party members, not the media. It’s a huge advantage to be able to speak half a dozen to a dozen times a week in front of millions of people; it helps a lot with fundraising.
Ultimately, the candidate must win the race, but the benefits of publicity cannot be overstated.
These networks not only anoint candidates, but now dictate who and what beliefs are acceptable in each party. You won’t find more than one or two Democrats in all of Washington who are even remotely pro-life, or at least willing to say so publicly. If any of them were “too loud,” a single monologue from Maddow or Lemon would destroy them.
Cable networks will make you a candidate, an author, a pundit, a conservative, a liberal. And vice versa, and worse, they can break you. Or never give you a chance to be any of those things.
In the past few years, cable news has become more partisan and more influential than ever in partisan politics. Instead of reporting or commenting on the news, anchors dictate what is and is not news.
Rachel Maddow can literally unleash an army of flying monkeys on Congress with an ill-conceived comment. It would be completely untrue or exaggerated beyond any recognizable version of reality, but it would be effective. And Democrats are terrified of facing her wrath. Conservatives are no different. That kind of pressure from a single entity messes everything up. Political movements are disconnecting from grassroots organizers and becoming dependent on bookers in New York or producers in Atlanta. It works, but not for the people.
Politicians who answer to cable networks, not to the people, are the creators of ratings, not of principled victories, and certainly not of victories for the Constitution. Jeff Zucker has Jeff Zucker’s best interests in mind, not the nation’s best interests. And if you think Fox is overloaded with conservatives behind the scenes or in the boardroom, you haven’t talked to the current and former long-term employees I know.
The cable networks are supposedly in the “news” business, but they’re really just in the “business” business. There’s nothing wrong with that. Building and keeping an audience is their job, period. It just shouldn’t be called news. They don’t talk to newsmakers, they don’t go looking for people directly involved in the events of the day. Now they just have the same 12 people every day to talk about the things that happened that week, and more often these days what their counterparts at other networks said about the events of the week. Yes, a huge percentage of what the “news” channels are talking about now is stupid stuff that other “news” networks have said.
It’s entertaining, I watch it, but it’s nothing that constitutes “news.” And it’s problematic when those responsible for commenting or reporting on the news turn into news producers or become history. If you really want to know when the country seriously started going to hell, look back to when news reporting was replaced by commentary and everyone else pretended it wasn’t. All media outlets did the same thing and nothing has been the same since.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!), presenter of a daily radio program in WCBM in Marylandand the author of the book, Outrage, INC.which exposes how liberals employ fear and hatred to manipulate the masses. Follow him on Twitter: @DerekAHunter.
