A bad day for the media?

If I were scripting a movie screenplay about the unraveling of American journalism, here’s my opening scene:

It’s Friday before the 2024 presidential election. The Washington Post is hosting a live webcast, with host Jonathan Capehart joined by liberal Post columnist Ruth Marcus and conservative Hugh Hewitt, ­veteran broadcaster and occasional Post columnist.

Details matter here. The first few minutes, Capehart gainsays every single opinion Hewitt expresses and amplifies every one of Marcus’. Finally, Capehart sets up Marcus to elaborate on the idea that by filing a lawsuit in a Pennsylvania court, Donald Trump was “laying the groundwork” to contest the election—replaying the chaos of 2020. Marcus runs with it, suggesting that, yes, Trump’s been plotting for “umpty-ump months” to challenge the results with an outside-inside strategy of intimidation in the streets and “far-fetched” legal arguments in the courts.

Both Marcus and Hewitt are trained lawyers, but Hewitt appears alone in his commitment to legal accuracy. He rebuts Marcus factually. He points out that the lawsuit succeeded in persuading the court to order officials in Bucks County, Pa., to accommodate early voting after they had unlawfully closed it prematurely.

“We are news people, even though we have opinions, and we have to report the whole story if we bring up part of the story,” Hewitt reminds his soon-to-be ex-colleagues. “So yes, [Trump was] upset about Bucks County, but he was right, and he won in court. That’s the story.”

The producer cuts to a three-box shot, revealing Capehart looking down, feigning boredom, his pen swishing back and forth across the table.

“I’ll let you keep going, Jonathan,” Marcus said, managing an awkward smile.

Capehart looks up. “Um, no, I’m just—I don’t appreciate being lectured about reporting when, Hugh, many times you come here saying lots of things that aren’t based in fact,” he says.

“I won’t come back, Jonathan. I’m done,” Hewitt shoots back, removing his earpiece and draping it over the microphone while bolting upright from his chair. “I’m done. This is the most unfair election ad I’ve ever been a part of. You guys are working, that’s fine. I’m done.”

Hewitt is a former senior writer for WORLD and is known for his steady composure—something I’ve witnessed firsthand over many years. Even on that Friday, when he very publicly resigned from the Post and coolly walked off the set, it was a reasonable reaction to disrespectful treatment.

Hewitt’s dramatic exit isn’t merely a symbol of personal pique. It represents a broader issue that has plagued the l­egacy news media for decades, but has increased dramatically since Trump came on the scene. Tim Graham, director of media analysis at the Media Research Center, said this election cycle revealed the starkest contrast in treatment of the two presidential candidates that MRC had ever recorded: The group found coverage of Kamala Harris 78 percent positive and of Trump 85 percent negative. “Trump’s coverage isn’t just ‘he had a bad day.’ It’s ‘he’s Hitler,’” Graham told me.

It’d be quaint if legacy media were merely biased, but that ship has sailed. No longer do the media define success by accuracy or fairness, Graham says, “but by whether they influence electoral outcomes.”

A piece by media writer Charlotte Klein in New York magazine before the election said as much—namely that a Trump victory would expose the industry’s dwindling relevance. “If half the country has decided that Trump is qualified to be president, that means they’re not reading any of this media, and we’ve lost this audience completely,” she quoted an anonymous media executive as saying. “A Trump victory means mainstream media is dead in its current form.”

Dead? That’s quite a tell.

Follow the logical chain. If voters read mainstream media coverage and vote against Trump, then media influence is affirmed. But if voters read it, or disbelieve or ignore it, and still conclude he’s qualified, then, as the executive suggests, that’s a failure—and the Trump victory renders that failure undeniable, perhaps fatal, for legacy media influence.

Meaning factual, informative news is no longer the goal. Winning elections is.

Works for us. You guys—and those on the right who’ve demonstrated an interest—you do election propaganda in your news pages. I’ve got a revolutionary concept in mind: news in the news pages. Who’s with me?