In October 2024, Gallup revealed that trust in “mass media” had fallen to 31%, the lowest since the outlet started polling the issue in 1972. Liberal media, meanwhile, continue to celebrate and award themselves for their failures, incompetence, and outright lies to the public.
Last week, ProPublica was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for “exposing the fatal consequences of abortion bans.” This was considered an award for “public service” by the Pulitzer Prize Board, which is made up of Democrats from outlets such as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and New Yorker (and, surely enough, ProPublica). ProPublica, the left-wing dark money-funded group masquerading as a journalistic outlet, won for its coverage of Amber Thurman, whose death the outlet attributed to Georgia’s abortion restrictions.
Georgia’s abortion restrictions didn’t kill Thurman, though. She was killed by a sepsis infection resulting from abortion pills that killed her twins but left her body unable to expel their remains. The hospital she went to slow-rolled her care, even though the procedure she needed was not banned by Georgia law because the unborn babies were already dead. Abortion pills and pro-abortion fearmongering about the law are what killed Thurman, contrary to the narrative ProPublica pushed in its “reporting.”
Luckily for ProPublica, a story being factual is not a prerequisite for winning a Pulitzer Prize. In 2022, the board decided not to revoke the joint award given to the New York Times and Washington Post for their coverage of “Russian collusion” with Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Despite the Pulitzer board insisting that “independent reviews” found “that no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged,” the Washington Post did, in fact, edit some of its reporting on the infamous Steele dossier after its primary source was accused of lying to the FBI. RealClearInvestigations identified at least five stories from the two outlets that needed corrections after a cursory review of their coverage.
They got to keep recognition of their jointly awarded Pulitzer, though. So, too, did the 1619 Project, the New York Times’s discredited rewriting of the history of slavery in the United States, including the false premise that the Revolutionary War was fought to preserve slavery. Even in 2003, the Pulitzer board refused to revoke the award it gave to Walter Duranty of the New York Times for his coverage of the Soviet Union, coverage that the New York Times itself called “some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper.”
This year, the Pulitzer board also awarded Mosab Abu Toha for “essays on the physical and emotional carnage in Gaza.” It isn’t shocking that Palestinian propaganda was celebrated by the Democrats who make up the Pulitzer board. That the author has argued against calling Israeli civilians kidnapped by Hamas “hostages” is, at least, a little concerning.
The Pulitzer Prize is not the only award that journalists give themselves to feel important. The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is to journalists what the Oscars are to celebrities. The participants celebrate themselves with smug self-importance while normal people roll their eyes. This year, the award was given to Axios’s Alex Thompson, who was just about the only person in liberal media to cover then-President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline.
Thompson used his speech to try and extend whatever credibility he earned for himself to the rest of his colleagues in liberal media. “We, myself included, missed a lot of this story,” Thompson said in his acceptance speech. How journalists who covered Biden for a living missed something that anyone and everyone could see while sitting on their couch at home is anyone’s guess, but it explains why the only guy who somewhat noticed it from the liberal media bubble gets showered with praise.
The fact is, liberal media did not “miss” the story of Biden’s cognitive decline and advanced age. They ignored it, claiming it was “ageist” (as Time magazine did) to talk about the issue or that videos showing Biden wandering off to nowhere were “misleading” (New York Times) or “cheap fakes” (Washington Post). Even the co-author of Thompson’s book on the subject, Jake Tapper, defended Biden’s failing mental faculties as being the result of a “stutter” and attacked Republicans for noticing Biden’s condition up until he could make money partnering with Thompson for a book on the Democratic “cover-up” of Biden’s condition.
On April 26, 2023, Biden was seen holding a cheat sheet that featured Los Angeles Times reporter Courtney Subramanian’s name and picture and was labeled “Reporter Q&A.” The card also featured a question about semiconductors and South Korea, which was the same topic she had asked about in a rephrased version.
It is hard to imagine a reality in which this was some innocuous moment. Biden’s team insisted it accurately predicted that this particular reporter would ask a question about this particular topic after hand-selecting her to ask the first question of the day. We also happen to know that Biden was regularly given a list of reporters he was instructed to call on and that he repeatedly said he would “get in trouble” if he didn’t take questions from only the approved names. We also know White House press secretary Jen Psaki, in the early days of the Biden administration, asked reporters for questions in advance.
It didn’t matter. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dodged questions about it, and everyone in liberal media moved on without much thought. Subramanian later left the Los Angeles Times for the BBC, but she also received a promotion: She is now a board member for the White House Correspondents’ Association.
Speaking of Psaki, she was similarly rewarded by liberal media despite her role in covering up Biden’s condition. Psaki was recruited to MSNBC while she was still serving as the White House press secretary, joining the network in 2022. She was given her own show and eventually a prime-time slot. Psaki claimed she was with Biden every single day for over a year but somehow did not see any signs of his mental decline.
RAINN WILSON CHALLENGES MSNBC’S STEPHANIE RHULE OVER DECLINING FAITH IN MEDIA
Through all of this, liberal media still demand a level of respect they lost long ago. NPR and PBS demand taxpayer funding while denying their obvious liberal bias. The Associated Press dictates language to other outlets through its AP stylebook, always with a liberal slant, and then demands special treatment as a wire service. Liberal journalists now pretend they were hoodwinked by Biden officials about the president’s condition, just to turn around and promote Biden staffers on their airwaves, including Psaki, former chief of staff Ron Klain, and comms team hatchet man Andrew Bates.
For liberal media, there is no admission of failures that can’t be hand-waved away. Failures get you promoted, or new book deals, or Pulitzer Prizes. It isn’t a surprise that just 31% of people trust liberal mass media. It’s a surprise that 31% still trust them at all.