In his Monday "Fourth Watch" newsletter, media critic Steve Krakauer reports The Acela Media is more out of touch than ever," and the proof is their ardent belief that the January 6 Committee is the dominant issue of our time, and the public is ardently bored, which makes journalists upset. "The corporate press has been hammering the issues of "democracy," January 6 and election denialism nonstop in the run-up to this midterm election," he writes.
He starts with the bizarre episode of Peter Strzok telling MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace that when it comes to an attack on democracy, "9/11 is nothing compared to January 6," then turns to the polls.
The latest Monmouth poll tracking the American people's attitudes toward the January 6 committee and its revelations came out on Wednesday, and the results are more of the same. Just 8% of Americans say their opinions about that day have been changed by the committee's hearings - the exact same as in August and up from 6% in June. 44% say they have no faith the committee could conduct a fair hearing -- that's the highest number yet, up 8% since August. But most importantly, just 36% of Americans say Donald Trump is "directly responsible" for what happened that day, a percentage that has been progressively declining since the hearings started.
He mentions the latest Gallup poll, which we noted shows that independents are losing trust in the press -- their belief that the press is fair and accurate has fallen from 42 percent to 27 percent.
Then there's the New York Times / Siena poll. It's hard to get partisans to agree on just about anything these days, but this poll shows one area where there is some consensus - disdain for the press. When asked what is a threat to democracy, 57% said Republicans were a major or minor threat, while 63% said Democrats. But far exceeding those numbers were those who said "the mainstream media" - that figure was 84%!
Guess how much the media have been talking about the public thinking THEY are a threat to democracy! Guess zero.
Of course, the state of democracy is something the media seems to be much more concerned about than the average American. In the same poll just 7% viewed it as the most important issue facing the country today. Voters are not nearly as concerned about the whole "election denier" issue as the press would like them to be. The New York Times poll found that 71% of Republicans are open to voting for someone who rejected the 2020 election results - but so are 37% of independents and even 12% of Democrats.
Journalists are so arrogant about how they are the smartest people with the best judgment, and democracy only survives by following them and their obsessions and their paranoid visions of Trump returning to power and becoming a right-wing dictator. Conveniently, listening to them means everyone votes Democrat and the Republicans go the way of the Whigs.
They're not listening to their audience. They're just lecturing about how they are "reality-based," and you're not.
Then there's a recent Harvard-Harris poll, which looked at what Americans see as their top issues, versus what the parties are most concerned with. January 6 was a top three issue to just 7% of respondents (inflation was #1 with 37%, and jobs/economy was #2 with 29%). What did respondents think Democrats were most concerned with? January 6 was #1, with 27%. I wish they asked about the media specifically.
This makes liberal journalists cranky. Krakauer closes with this recent headline from CNN's Chris Cillizza: "January 6 appears to have taught us nothing."
This is where conservative Twitter pulls up once again Cillizza's silly tweet from 2016: "Let me say for the billionth time: Reporters don't root for a side. Period."
