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--:-- John Bickley: Welcome to Morning Wire. I'm John Bickley, and I'm here with Georgia Howe.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for joining us, John.
--:-- John Bickley: Today, we're discussing the media's failures in 2024, which likely contributed to the public's record low trust in legacy media.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's right, John. And we're joined by Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham to look back at the year's biggest media fails.
--:-- Megan Basham: Thanks for having me.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Megan, before we get into the fails, can you give us a quick overview of where the industry stands now?
--:-- Megan Basham: Yeah, very true. And I do have to say that the media landscape right now looks bad. It looks really bad. If you'll remember, right before the start of the year, we saw substantial layoffs at The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR. And as you said, that's not what you expect to see heading into a major campaign year when media revenues typically tend to increase.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Then if we go back to the beginning of the year, in January, the Los Angeles Times cut more than 20% of its newsroom. Time Magazine cut 15 percent. And that kind of bad news just continued throughout 2024.
--:-- Megan Basham: By the summer, CNN had laid off 100 people, and they're now reportedly planning to lay off hundreds more. Comcast may sell MSNBC. And neither of those developments should be surprising when you look at some of the cable news ratings.
--:-- Georgia Howe: To put it bluntly, they're a dumpster fire. According to Nielsen data, MSNBC is still down by more than half of what it was averaging up to election night. And CNN is down by slightly less than half, though it didn't have as far to fall because it was already at the bottom of the pack.
--:-- Megan Basham: And even though I will say both left and right are showing media distrust, so you do have to take that into account when you look at some of those numbers from polling outfits like Gallup. You also have to take into account that Fox News' ratings are way up this year. They're now beating the ratings of the other cable news outlets combined. Suggesting that a lot of former CNN and MSNBC viewers are flocking there.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So, I want to get into some of the major doozies that are likely driving a lot of the legacy media's poor performance. Just looking back at this year, what are some of the biggest standouts to you?
--:-- Megan Basham: You know, for me, the biggest one wasn't an issue where there was clear deception or inaccuracy, but just some really appallingly callous coverage of the most momentous moment of the campaign. And that was the response to the attempt on president-elect Donald Trump's life at that rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13th.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That very same night, ABC viewers heard George Stephanopoulos and Martha Raddatz in part blame the victim. President Trump and his supporters have contributed to this violent rhetoric as well.
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, absolutely, George. And then on the print front, the day after Butler, The Atlantic ran a piece that said that, and I'm quoting, the bloodshed Trump has done so much to incite against others has touched him as well.
--:-- Georgia Howe: In September, of course, there was a second assassination attempt at Trump's golf course, and you heard similar rhetoric from major media.
--:-- Megan Basham: Almost immediately after news of that second assassination attempt broke, MSNBC anchor Alex Witt asked political analyst Elise Jordan this. Do you expect to hear anything from the Trump campaign about toning down the rhetoric, toning down the violence or would that be atypical of the former president?
--:-- Alex Witt: Well, Alex, remember back to the assassination attempt on President Trump's life and how there was talk of a new tone and then the Republican convention was by Trumpian standards muted. And it did seem like he was just trying to take it down a few notches. But then by the end of his convention speech, we were kind of back to where we started.
--:-- Megan Basham: Also on that same night, we had this from NBC anchor Lester Holt. Today's apparent assassination attempt comes amid increasingly fierce rhetoric on the campaign trail itself. Mr. Trump, his running mate J.D. Vance continue to make baseless claims about Haitian immigrants in Ohio.
--:-- Lester Holt: And we need to remember that we're talking about the first Republican candidate to win the popular vote in 20 years. So you can imagine how this struck at least half of the country.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And it's the kind of thing that I think is very hard to come back from because it's not a mistake. It's a level of bias that's a little more off-putting.
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, that brings to mind some of the media commentary we've heard just in the last few weeks regarding the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, just the minimizing of the crime and making light of it.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So moving on to the second biggest fail of 2024, what's that?
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, you know, I almost made this number one because it was such a systemic failure and involved such obvious deception. And that was the media's insistence throughout the spring and much of the summer that President Biden was not suffering from any mental infirmity, when it was pretty obvious to the American people that he was.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So let's look at MSNBC. In June, anchor Nicole Wallace blamed the Biden appearances that were alarming the public on selectively edited clips.
--:-- Nicole Wallace: There's a growing and insidious trend in right wing media, broadcast, print and social media. It is to take highly misleading and selectively edited videos of President Biden directly from Republican National Committee social media accounts and then use those videos to spread messages virally to cast doubt on President Biden's fitness for office.
--:-- Megan Basham: And we would take the hand wringing by right wing media about Biden's mental fitness in videos intentionally manipulated to make him look unfit, maybe a little more seriously if they weren't radio silent about the repeated glaring and real mental lapses happening behind podiums and on camera on the part of Donald Trump.
--:-- Georgia Howe: It's interesting there that Wallace tried to claim that Trump was having the same kind of mental lapses, but those claims have disappeared now that the election is over.
--:-- Megan Basham: Wallace's colleague, Joe Scarborough, also sought to reassure his viewers that Biden was fine. This version of Biden, intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever. Not a close second. And I've known him for years. The Brzezinski's have known him for 50 years. If it weren't the truth, I wouldn't say it.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And I mean, the list of legacy outlets that dismissed the videos of Biden seeming lost and confused that Americans could see with their own eyes is a really long one. The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, the AP, NBC, they all called these videos cheap fakes, meaning misleading edits of real video.
--:-- Megan Basham: And when Corinne Jean-Pierre leaned into that narrative during the White House press briefings, it really did look like a collaborative effort between the media and the Biden administration.
--:-- Georgia Howe: There seems to be a sort of rash of videos that have been edited to make the president appear especially frail or mentally confused. I'm wondering if the White House is especially worried about the fact that this appears to be a pattern that we're seeing more about.
--:-- Megan Basham: Yeah, we and I think you all have called this the cheap fakes video. And that's exactly what they are. They are cheap fakes video. They are done in bad faith. And some of your news organization have been very clear, have stressed that these right-wing critics of the president have a credibility problem because of the fact checkers have repeatedly caught them pushing misinformation, disinformation.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, Biden's disastrous debate performance at the end of June made it impossible to deny his mental state and made it clear that he really had no chance of winning at that point. Then the coverage changed immediately and many media outlets began calling for him to step aside.
--:-- Megan Basham: Just one example, on June 21st, the New York Times ran a story which reported that any claims that Biden was suffering from diminished faculties were because of these cheap fakes But two weeks later the day after the debate, they ran an editorial calling on him to step down due to his mental lapses.
--:-- Georgia Howe: All right, now moving on to number three. What do you have there?
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, I still don't think we can get away from the election yet because another glaring issue were the fact checks, especially during the debates.
--:-- Georgia Howe: For instance, at the ABC debate between Trump and Harris, moderators David Muir and Lindsay Davis fact-checked numerous times, including when Trump was generally correct.
--:-- David Muir: Hard to believe they have some states passing legislation where you can execute the baby after birth.
--:-- Lindsay Davis: There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it's born. Madam Vice President, want to get your response to President Trump.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, this was a pretty semantic fact check, I think, because Harris's own running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, helped repeal a state law that required doctors to render medical aid to a baby that survives an abortion. So in Minnesota, doctors can let born babies die. And that has happened in at least eight cases in that state.
--:-- Georgia Howe: New York and Illinois also repealed laws that require medical care for babies that survive abortion. By the same token, ABC never fact-checked Harris, despite the fact that Harris made a number of false claims, like saying that there were no members of the U.S. military on active duty in a combat zone anywhere around the world.
--:-- Megan Basham: In fact, there are 3,000. After the same debate, Time magazine wrote that Trump's claim that Harris supported funding sex changes for illegal immigrants was false. It wasn't. And time later had to issue a correction.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So that looked to a lot of people like glaring bias. And we did see something similar with NBC and the vice presidential debate.
--:-- Megan Basham: There, moderator Margaret Brennan interrupted J.D. Vance as he was referencing undocumented immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.
--:-- Margaret Brennan: Just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status, temporary protected status.
--:-- J.D. Vance: Well, Margaret, but-
--:-- Margaret Brennan: Senator, we have so much to get to.
--:-- J.D. Vance: Margaret, I think it's important because-
--:-- Margaret Brennan: We're gonna turn out of the economy, thank you.
--:-- J.D. Vance: Margaret, the rules were that you guys weren't gonna fact-check. And since you're fact-checking me, I think it's important to say what's actually going on.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So there's an application called the CBP One App where you can go on as an illegal migrant, apply for asylum or apply for parole and be granted legal status at the wave of a Kamala Harris open border wand.
--:-- Margaret Brennan: That is not a person coming in, applying for a green card and waiting for 10 years. That is the facilitation of a legal immigration, Margaret, by our own leadership.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So again, a lot of viewers detected bias in that exchange.
--:-- Megan Basham: And then there were ethical issues in the media's favorable treatment of Harris. MSNBC host Al Sharpton, for instance, did not disclose that the Harris campaign made a $500,000 donation to his nonprofit right before he conducted a softball interview with the candidate.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Meanwhile, 60 Minutes was caught having edited their interview with Harris to make what were some pretty meandering, confusing answers to questions more comprehensible.
--:-- Megan Basham: CBS then ignored widespread calls to release the full transcript of the interview so that audiences could judge it for themselves.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So would you say most of these fails were related to the election?
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, definitely, because of course that dominated the news cycle for the year, but it wasn't exclusively election moments.
--:-- Georgia Howe: When it came to the war in Gaza, major outlets had major egg on their faces when it was revealed that they'd been using inaccurate statistics provided by Hamas, which has of course been designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department.
--:-- Megan Basham: Outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Guardian, CNN, BBC, Reuters, AP, they all took data disseminated by the Gaza Ministry of Health, which is controlled by Hamas, at face value, and they passed it along to their audiences.
--:-- Georgia Howe: For instance, they reported fatality numbers for Palestinian women and children that a later study found were mathematically impossible.
--:-- Megan Basham: So in essence, you could say they aided Hamas's PR campaign.
--:-- Georgia Howe: This kind of credulity when it comes to war coverage led to a really embarrassing incident for CNN just recently here at the close of the year.
--:-- Megan Basham: On December 11th the network ran a story from foreign correspondent Clarissa Ward in which she encountered a man in an empty Syrian prison. He told her he'd been detained by the Assad regime for months.
--:-- Clarissa Ward: After three months in a windowless cell, he can finally see the sky. The rebel tells him there's no more army, no more prisons, no more checkpoints. Are you serious, he says? Syria is free, he tells him. It's the first time he has heard those words.
--:-- Georgia Howe: When CNN posted the video to social media, users immediately pointed out how inauthentic the man's appearance and behavior seemed, rather like something out of a low-budget movie.
--:-- Megan Basham: And sure enough, within days, a Syrian fact-checking site revealed that the man was really a former intelligence officer for the Assad government.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And plenty of people rightly questioned why CNN didn't take more time verifying that man's identity before they rushed the story to air.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, have we seen any acknowledgement from some of these legacy medias about these kind of mistakes and what it's costing them with audiences?
--:-- Georgia Howe: You know, not so much from the journalistic class, though. I will say Chris Saliza, formerly of CNN, did put out something of a mea culpa a few days ago.
--:-- Megan Basham: So in 2021, he said that Republicans trying to make Biden's mental capacity an issue were engaging in, quote, lowest common denominator politics.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But just this December 19th, he said this.
--:-- Chris Saliza: As a reporter, I have a confession to make. I should have pushed harder earlier for more information about Joe Biden's mental and physical well-being and any signs of decline.
--:-- Megan Basham: So let me explain. Joe Biden was president from 2020 to 2024. I worked at CNN through 2022. During that time, the early part when I was at CNN, 2020 to 2022, people would regularly, Republicans would regularly ping me and say, why don't you ask more questions to Joe Biden and how he's doing? He's 76, 77, 78 year old man and I would sort of brush them off because what I would say is well there's no obvious evidence that he's declining yeah he moves a little slower he talks a little slower but there's no evidence that he's declining and and the White House and the people around Joe Biden were absolutely adamant that suggesting anything asking the question about whether he was in some physical, mental, or both decline was offensive.
--:-- Georgia Howe: How could you? It's age shaming. And I think that impacted me at some level because while I did ask the question from time to time of, you know, not directly the White House, but AIDS and people around in that orbit, I didn't really push on it, if I'm being honest.
--:-- Megan Basham: And a couple of media owners have somewhat backtracked. Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, has promised that his paper is going to strive for more balanced coverage going forward.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And so has the owner of the Los Angeles Times.
--:-- Megan Basham: But when it comes to those actually telling stories, I will say that their mea culpas have mostly been forced.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Sonny Hostin, co-host on ABC's The View, for instance, had to read a legal disclaimer only a few weeks ago after some comments she made about Trump's nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.
--:-- Megan Basham: But I will leave you with one more media fail, Georgia. It's not the biggest of the year, but it is certainly the most expensive.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So back in March, during an interview with South Carolina Congresswoman Nancy Mace, ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos made this claim about Donald Trump multiple times. You've endorsed Donald Trump for president. Judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape and for defaming the victim of that rape.
--:-- George Stephanopoulos: Except that wasn't true. And reportedly, Stephanopoulos' producer warned him repeatedly, including in writing, not to make that claim on the air.
--:-- Megan Basham: Stephanopoulos did it anyway. Trump sued. And just a few days ago, ABC agreed to pay $16 million to settle.
--:-- Georgia Howe: ABC and Stephanopoulos also issued a joint statement saying that they regret the anchor statements regarding President Donald J. Trump.
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, in light of some of these numbers and just coming into this new year, it'll be interesting to see if some of these papers and outlets decide to turn over a new leaf.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Megan, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Megan Basham: Anytime.
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--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for listening to Morning Wire.
