Trust in the national media has dropped to a historic low of 28% in the latest Gallup survey, and Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) thinks he knows why.
“They can be impertinent little buttheads,” he said, adding that reporters are “in many ways worse than the Democrats.”
That liberal bias, he wrote in his new political biography released Tuesday and shared with Washington Secrets, is what’s destroying the media business and America.
“The fact is that agenda journalism is doing its part to tear this country apart,” he said in How to Test Negative for Stupid: And Why Washington Never Will.
The two-term senator, considered a “national treasure” among conservatives for his folksy style of ripping liberals and standing up for long-held Republican values, carved out space in his new book, published by Broadside Books, part of HarperCollins Publishers, to call out and challenge the media.
He avoided mentioning specific reporters or outlets, with one exception: Former NBC Meet the Press host Chuck Todd. “Chuck has never been mistaken for Walter Cronkite,” he wrote.
With a broad brush, he accurately described how the media from Louisiana to Washington has shifted from a both-sides style of reporting to an agenda-driven model meant to win internet “clicks” from equally biased followers.
And for most of the media, he said, that meant slamming President Donald Trump and Republicans.
“I talk to reporters. I’ve talked to thousands of them over the years. But I’ve also learned that 90% of their questions are loaded from a liberal perspective,” wrote Kennedy.
“A lot of the journalists I’m describing are young. They went straight from woke college campuses to left-leaning newsrooms without ever hearing a dissenting opinion. They think it’s immoral to fire bad employees, to cut wasteful spending, to deport illegal immigrants, to like cops, to prosecute most thieves who steal less than $950, to ask questions about vaccines and lockdowns, to use the wrong pronoun, to oppose sex-change operations for kids, to oppose trans people in women’s bathrooms or locker rooms or sports, to oppose critical race theory in schools, to oppose reading porn in schools, and to oppose racial quotas. I could go on. The goal of education should be to teach people to think, not to make them feel comfortable. But too many young reporters go catatonic and foam at the mouth if they are confronted with any idea not part of their dogma,” said Kennedy.
As with many in Washington, Kennedy said that national reporters have become a fixture in the anti-Trump “swamp,” and likely a driver in Gallup’s findings.
“Most Americans see this. They think the news isn’t the news anymore — it’s propaganda. It’s indoctrination. Even if they agree with it. That might not be fair, but it’s what people think, and it’s inevitable after the media squandered their trust,” wrote Kennedy.
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What’s more, he said the fractured media business gets what it deserves.
“Was, or is, the media always wrong? Nope. But when your job is to report facts and you report opinion, or you use facts selectively to advance a narrative, or you continue to balance on your nose, like a trained seal, what ‘your’ side tells you and you squeal with delight when the ‘other side’ stumbles, or you rationalize that this is all okay because it’s for America’s own good, because Trump hates democracy, well, people stop believing you,” wrote the senator.
