AP Photo/Matt Rourke
Gallup’s annual survey of civic and political trust, released this week, found that the media is currently America’s least-trusted institution.
Just 31% of those polled — a new historic low — have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the mass media, including just 27% of independent voters and 12% of Republicans.
Back in 2005, the overall trust number was 50%. A complete cratering.
In his many tangles with the mainstream media, JD Vance is showing them why this is.
Vance in recent weeks has repeatedly schooled anchors, hosts and reporters in basic facts about the economy, the law and other core topics, demonstrating again and again how siloed they have become from ordinary Americans.
Either they wall themselves off from sources that challenge their worldview — to the point they simply don’t understand reality — or they can afford to ignore those truths, because things like crime, inflation and the impact of illegal immigration don’t impact them in any way they can actually feel.
It’s how the industry totally missed Trump’s victory in 2016, because almost none of its members spoke to voters in places like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
And by operating in this bubble, these journalists-turned-activists have made themselves ignorant.
Ever since Donald Trump chose Vance as his running mate, the former Marine and current Ohio senator has been going into hostile media environments: The New York Times podcast, CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC and more — a refreshing change at a time when risk-averse politicians tend to hide in their safe spaces for maximum comfort.
Vance has shown confidence and conviction against reporters and anchors hell-bent on portraying him as a “weird,” “extreme” elitist (that last one is particularly rich) for having had the audacity to rise out of his nightmarish Rust Belt upbringing and graduate from Yale Law School.
More important, his appearances show voters he understands what the real world is like for average folks living outside of an elitist ecosystem — unlike his media antagonists.
Every time, they set out to play a hostile game of gotcha with Vance — and every time, he shows them up.
During the vice presidential debate, for example, CBS moderator Margaret Brennan made an erroneous attempt to fact-check Vance on the law regarding illegal immigration, and he accurately fact-checked her right back.
In the midst of his truthful retort, CBS cut his mic to avoid being humiliated before tens of millions of viewers.
This week, Vance took ABC’s Martha Raddatz to school when she argued that violent Venezuelan gangs had seized only “a handful of apartment complexes” in Aurora, Colo., as she tried to accuse the Republicans of manufacturing an issue.
“Martha, do you hear yourself?” Vance answered with an incredulous grin. “Only ‘a handful of apartment complexes’ were taken over by Venezuelan gangs, and Donald Trump is the problem and not Kamala Harris’ open border?”
Perhaps that’s why social-media platforms like X are dominating our political discourse, while ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN are seeing their audience numbers drop year after year.
Look at the numbers when X user Collin Rugg posted video of the Vance-Raddatz encounter: His clip got 1.7 million views; similar posts on other right-leaning accounts racked up at least 3.6 million more.
Compare that to Raddatz’s audience: About 2.3 million viewers tuned into the show last week, far fewer than those who saw the exchange on social media.
Ultimately, calling out the media when they promote falsehoods or dismiss crises or push Democrat-friendly narratives is a smart political strategy for the GOP.
Past presidential candidates like the late John McCain and Mitt Romney believed that if they were friendly and accommodating enough, the press would come to like them and therefore give them more positive coverage.
That never happened.
They both lost to Barack Obama, because he was the media’s guy no matter what the Republicans did or how they brown-nosed.
Donald Trump changed all that in 2016. He didn’t play along when anchors and reporters pushed garbage documents like the dubious Steele dossier, or when they later dismissed legitimate bombshells like Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Vance uses the same approach — but does so with a smile and specifics.
So when Vance and Trump call out the media, let’s just say that, according to Gallup, very few Americans are cheering for the so-called Fourth Estate.
And if Trump wins this election, his decision to choose Vance may go down as the best one of his campaign.
Joe Concha is the author of “Progressively Worse: Why Today’s Democrats Ain’t Your Daddy’s Donkeys.”