On the same Sunday morning that NewsBusters executive editor Tim Graham appeared on CNN’s Reliable Sources duking it out over Trump and the news media, a pair of panelists on NBC’s Meet the Press took veiled shots at the Fox News Channel (FNC) and conservative media figures like Glenn Beck for the decline in American political civility and decorum because they’ve been undermining the federal government.
After highlighting the lack of traditionally right-leaning newspapers endorsing Donald Trump, Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter ruled that “not just in elites in media, but in elites in having everything” have been losing sway over the rest of the country.
Walter used this reality as a launching point to harken back to the previous segment with far-left filmmaker Michael Moore and The Blaze founder/author Glenn Beck as the latter has been decrying the current state of the country’s discourse:
The question though, I think that didn't get answered in this was who's responsible for creating this? And people in the media also have a responsibility for that and so, when I see folks coming out and kind of wringing their hands about how terrible and uncivil it is, they've been helping to — they've been making a lot of money in helping to foment this kind of conversation.
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Before Voto Latino’s Maria Teresa Kumar joined in, National Review’s Rich Lowry succinctly explained that the erosion in the approval of the federal government has been an issue for sometime as “[i]n 1964, it was about 80 percent of people thought it would do the right thing all or some of the time” compared to being in the teens nowadays.
“[T]hat's true of almost every major institution and I think a lot of this is we live in a different, decentralized age and we're probably never going back to a time when people have that sort of faith in big, centralizing institutions. The one institution that's held up very well, very notably, is local government,” Lowry added.
It was here that Kumar took over and lobbed a not-so-subtle jab at “propaganda machine” FNC for destroying any faith their viewers have had in the federal government (and not, say, anything the government has done to sour their viewers or the mainstream media’s behavior):
But I also think when you start looking at the effect within the media, you basically have a network for the last 15 years saying that you can't trust politicians, that our government is broken and after that, people start internalizing that and we end up in getting a candidate like Donald Trump, who's completely anti-establishment, completely populist rhetoric and it's like, well, there is such a shift when people say, “well, I don't trust government.” But it's because we've actually had a propaganda machine for the last 15, 20 years, saying, “you shouldn't.”
The relevant portion of the transcript from NBC’s Meet the Press on October 2 can be found below.
NBC’s Meet the Press
October 2, 2016
11:17 a.m. EasternCHUCK TODD: Look elite opinions have had I would say no new influence on this campaign. How about that?
AMY WALTER: You could also argue they're having less and less influence every year and whether you put this up in 2004 or 2008 and when we've seen it now, the gradual decline, not just in elites in media, but in elites in everything. In business, in organized religion, it's become much more diffused. The question though, I think that didn't get answered in this was who's responsible for creating this? And people in the media also have a responsibility for that and so, when I see folks coming out and kind of wringing their hands about how terrible and uncivil it is, they've been helping to — they've been making a lot of money in helping to foment this kind of conversation.
RICH LOWRY: You look at just a trust of the federal government. In 1964, it was about 80 percent of people thought it would do the right thing all or some of the time. Now it's in the teens and that's true of almost every major institution and I think a lot of this is we live in a different, decentralized age and we're probably never going back to a time when people have that sort of faith in big, centralizing institutions. The one institution that's held up very well, very notably, is local government.
TODD: Right and the military.
WALTER: And the military. Yeah.
TODD: Both the military, also, I would argue, also draws from a more diverse pool of Americans. So that has helped.
MARIA TERESA KUMAR: But I also think when you start looking at the effect within the media, you basically have a network for the last 15 years saying that you can't trust politicians, that our government is broken and after that, people start internalizing that and we end up in getting a candidate like Donald Trump, who's completely anti-establishment, completely populist rhetoric and it's like, well, there is such a shift when people say, “well, I don't trust government.” But it's because we've actually had a propaganda machine for the last 15, 20 years, saying, “you shouldn't.”
MARK HALPERIN: There's a spiritual and cultural element to this, but to me, it's mostly economic. You look at Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, they weren't members of the parties whose nominations they ran for about a year ago and both of them talked about the economic elites and the government elites being out of touch with what's happened to the American dream and I think both parties have to get an understanding of why those two guys did so well, regardless of who wins.
