On Tuesday night’s episode of MSNBC’s The 11th Hour, a panel hosted by Stephanie Ruhle expressed their regret, dismay, and indignation at the implosion of public confidence in established, mainstream media outlets, such as their own. In typical fashion for them, they pinned all the blame on such favorite bogeymen as President Trump and Elon Musk, and showed no self-awareness of the fact that they themselves may have borne much responsibility for the trend, with their own track record of politicized, one-sided, and less-than-transparent reporting.
Raising the subject, Ruhle turned to Semafor political reporter Dave Weigel, with the words, “you've also been reporting on this evolving problem…where less information is coming from newsrooms-right? Legitimate newsrooms- and what's happening is more and more hoaxes are gaining traction on social media, where none of them need to be verified whatsoever.”
Weigel agreed that it was a problem, saying, “[I]t's a decades long process of Americans losing trust in mainstream media.” And without any reflection as to why, he noted: “It was sped up by- at- around COVID it was sped up by Donald Trump. He's the biggest beneficiary, politically, of people saying they don't trust information from mainstream news networks.”
After noting that Democrats were likely to approved of the liberal media, Weigel lamented that people were going around them to get information:
The population that does not trust the mainstream media, that wants to read links without filter, that- that is relying on accounts that post news clips- and sometimes they use the language of news like ‘breaking,’ or ‘exclusive,’ or ‘just in,’ but don't actually know how to construct the story or verify it or report it- don't have to worry about getting something wrong.
Basically, his view was that the general American public- at least those who were not already committed liberals- were being duped by unscrupulous and sensationalist propaganda, fiendishly disguised as legitimate journalism, and put out by unscrupulous actors with ulterior motives of their own. Ideally, the public should return to reliance on pure, noble, impartial sources of legitimate news, like MSNBC.
Ruhle was all too happy to agree:
And listen, people are primed and ready to believe, with good reason, that the government spends too much money, it spends it in wasteful places. And when you hand them a ridiculous whopper of a story that fits that narrative, they gobble it up.
Speaking of ridiculous whoppers that happened to fit a chosen narrative, these same mainstream media outlets were not exactly unsullied in that respect themselves. MSNBC themselves were, at that very moment, facing a $30 million defamation suit for their attacks on a Georgia gynecologist treating illegal immigrants under the auspices of ICE. MSNBC had erroneously dubbed this physician “the uterus collector” and alleged with no actual evidence that he had abused his patients, and performed unnecessary hysterectomies on them.
In their minds, though, none of that seemed to matter. Clearly they were so obviously trustworthy and morally and professionally superior, no one could have any legitimate motive for doubting them.
Ruhle continued on the topic of what she perceived as the Trump administration’s completely unwarranted persecution:
President Trump's FCC chief is now opening an investigation into PBS and NPR, two truly independent news organizations. Is this just another example- dangerous example- of Project 2025 in action? Because they called on all funding for public broadcasting to end, and here we are.
Actually, this was itself misleading at best. While defunding public broadcasting may have been part of Project 2025, the idea had been part of conservative cost cutting proposals for decades. So it was nothing new.
Additionally, Ruhle’s claim that PBS was “truly independent” was laughable seeing as there’s a ton of crossover between the public broadcaster and MSNBC. PBS host Amna Nawaz is also an MSNBC contributor, Jonathan Capehart hosts an MSNBC show and is PBS contributor, Yamiche Alcindor left PBS to join MSNBC after years of appearance on the cable network, and Geoff Bennett went the other way, leaving MSNBC for PBS.
Not for the first time, MSNBC’s complete lack of self-awareness was truly mind-boggling.
To read the full transcript, click "Expand"
MSNBC’s The 11th Hour
02/11/2025
11:08 PM[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: FCC OPENS INVESTIGATION INTO NPR, PBS]
STEPHANIE RUHLE: Dave, you've also been reporting on this evolving problem- you guys could all weigh in on this- where less information is coming from newsrooms-right? Legitimate newsrooms- and what's happening is more and more hoaxes are gaining traction on social media, where none of them need to be verified whatsoever. How do Democrats counter that?
DAVE WEIGEL, SEMAFOR POLITICAL REPORTER: They have not figured out a good strategy for doing that yet- there isn't one- there are lots of people who thought about this- but it's a decades long process of Americans losing trust in mainstream media.
It was sped up by- at- around COVID it was sped up by Donald Trump. He's the biggest beneficiary, politically, of people saying they don't trust information from mainstream news networks.
And I should be a little more specific: There are lots of people who do trust information they get from legacy media outlets- that's kind of the conservative pejorative- they're usually Democratic. They're the sort of people who have these careers at USAID that are- that are ending as we- as we speak.
The population that does not trust the mainstream media, that wants to read links without filter, that- that is relying on accounts that post news clips- and sometimes they use the language of news like ‘breaking,’ or ‘exclusive,’ or ‘just in,’ but don't actually know how to construct the story or verify it or report it- don't have to worry about getting something wrong. That- that is trafficking- a lot of these- false ideas about what the government has been funding. We saw that very early on in this process, with the idea that USAID was going to $100 million, in Trump's words, of condoms for Hamas, that-
RUHLE: (Sighs)
WEIGEL: None of what I said in that sentence is just true. But there have been a number of these, and they're- basically- DOGE- without the kind of transparency that we might identify- here- here are- here's the line item, here's what we got rid of, here's- here's who's responsible. Just posting these items and saying, we have gotten rid of this funding. Take our word for it.
There are a lot of news consumers who are staying fairly informed and will not read the fine print or go do the research themselves. They believe this is- this is happening because sources they trust- and Elon Musk is one of those sources on X- are telling them that it's working and it's good. They don't trust the media if it says otherwise.
RUHLE: And listen, people are primed and ready to believe, with good reason, that the government spends too much money, it spends it in wasteful places. And when you hand them a ridiculous whopper of a story that fits that narrative, they gobble it up.
In that same vein, Jeff, President Trump's FCC chief is now opening an investigation into PBS and NPR, two truly independent news organizations. Is this just another example- dangerous example- of Project 2025 in action? Because they called on all funding for public broadcasting to end, and here we are.
JEFF MASON, REUTERS WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, I think it probably is another example. And I think it's just in line with this- this administration and President Trump's very aggressive stance this time around against the media and- and the press, and the news organizations that he doesn't- that he doesn't like.
And- when I say this time around, I don't want to downplay the pressure that was put on the media during his first term, but- but just the list of examples that we could- we could talk about right now in addition to these two, in terms of lawsuits that he has launched. And, by the way, in terms of the response from some of those media organizations, is- is, I think- a good example of how much pressure he feels empowered to give now that he has won this second term.
RUHLE: But don’t-
MASON: And I also wanted to just make a note about the other piece of the conversation we were talking about earlier: Elon Musk, in the oval office, earlier tonight, was challenged about that condom story that we were just talking about, and he- I don't want to say he dismissed it, but he said, ‘I'll make mistakes. We'll make mistakes sometimes and then we'll correct it.’
And of course, we as reporters also have to correct our mistakes and do make mistakes. But just the way that he seemed, accepting of the fact that it's not a really, really important goal to get it right from the very beginning, was an interesting point from the world's richest man, and perhaps one of the most powerful people in President Trump's government.
RUHLE: Okay, but that was kind of a sideways comment, right? He publicly came out with the nonsense condom story and pushed it and pushed it. After he answered that question, did he- did he then go to X and say, ‘I made a mistake? This story that was posted here, and posted thousands of times on this platform, was wrong?”
MASON: Uh, not that I'm aware of.
RUHLE: Me either.
