Tucker Carlson is right: the American media “lie to their readers and viewers, and they do it mostly by omission.”
On any given night, CNN gets about 580,000 viewers. MSNBC receives about 1.1 million, and the king of cable television, Fox News, gets around 2.2 million. Tucker Carlson’s interview with Putin has already received over 150 million views. Perhaps those numbers are part of the reason why he was so viciously attacked by the talking heads of cable TV and the news media for conducting the sit-down with Russia’s leader.
Former Fox News host Chris Wallace accused Carlson of being an “eager puppy” trying to please the Russian strongman. A New York Times columnist wrote that Carlson was the “Tokyo Rose of our day,” labeling Carlson a traitor to the nation. Still others called him a “useful idiot,” “servile,” and a “sycophant.” The Babylon Bee poked fun at the media’s hyperbolic reaction with a headline that read, “Journalists Confused by Journalists Doing Journalism.”
But really: what was all the fuss over?
Carlson wasn’t seeking to advance and promote Russian propaganda; he was merely looking to get questions answered by the country’s president.
In addition to asking Putin tough questions that visibly irritated the Russian leader, Carlson pressed for the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, a 33-year-old journalist imprisoned by Russia over allegations of espionage.
Is it now a crime to interview — and ask hard-hitting questions of — world leaders? It sure seems that way. Some journalism professors are even openly pushing their students to abandon objectivity altogether.
Is this really what is best for our country?
This problem of lying by omission extends far beyond the criticism Tucker has received for putting Putin’s views on record.
The New York Times, for instance, pushed out opinion editor James Bennet for publishing Republican Sen. Tom Cotton’s plea for security during the George Floyd riots. Instead of brushing off the junior staff members who protested the column, the paper’s brass buckled to the mob.
In a recent cover story for The Economist, Bennet wrote that the Times’ “problem has metastasized from liberal bias to illiberal bias, from an inclination to favor one side of the national debate to an impulse to shut debate down altogether.” Bennet is correct. Today, the mainstream media will do seemingly anything to toe the Democratic Party line. Often, that means ignoring the other side’s point of view altogether.
Recently, the mainstream media even went so far as to lie by omission to damage the reputations of conservative-minded law enforcement and first responder groups.
In a May 2023 hit piece, the Times attacked the American Police Officers Alliance, National Police Support Fund, and conservative political organizations that support first responders and veterans. Fundraising to protect conservative values and objectives might run counter to some Democrats’ and Times reporters’ priorities, but it is far from a crime. The paper knew its allegations were controversial because, days prior to the publication of this story, an extensive IRS audit of the organizations came back squeaky clean, with the agency giving them a greenlight to “continue operations as is.” Yet, the Times — still determined to hit “publish” on a story that was likely weeks in the making — ignored these facts and opted to attack these organizations two days later anyway.
Questioning the integrity of conservative advocacy organizations without even mentioning the clean bill of health they received from the IRS just days earlier? Talk about lying by omission!
So no, Tucker wasn’t wrong to interview a world leader whose war and policies are deeply impacting the American people. The mainstream media is just not used to seeing or conducting anything that resembles real journalism anymore — they are more concerned with ensuring that nothing they report interferes with the Democratic Party’s political goals.
The public has taken note of this shift in the news media’s priorities. That is why a new Gallup poll shows that nearly seven-in-ten Americans have either “not very much” trust or “none at all” in the media’s ability to present basic facts. News organizations’ replacement of objectivity with agenda-oriented journalism is causing them to lose viewers and readers as millions of Americans turn to alternative sources of news they trust and believe — such as Carlson’s online platform.
The media may not be able to put one and one together until their audience numbers decline to untenable lows. In the meantime, the American people will continue to speak with their wallets and eyeballs. If there is any real takeaway from the Tucker-Putin interview, it is this: the time for change is now.
Michael Glassner is the former COO of the Trump for President campaign.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.