Hello, CNN: Kaitlyn, Anderson, Jake, Chris—What in Hell Happened?

Now, be honest: What is the really big question hanging over the November 5 election of Donald Trump?

I can tell you what it was for me, perhaps because I spent the months of the campaign watching CNN. Not my choice, but, you know, family…

Postmodern in advocacy journalism translates into jettisoning the once-honored notion of objectivity.

Night after night I watched so-called “news reports”—like interviews with potential voters—consistently slanted against Trump in a host of devious ways. This “advocacy journalism,” of course, has long existed. It took off during the Vietnam War/Watergate years with the penetration of postmodernist philosophy into new generations of college graduates in all fields, not least journalism.

Rooted in an epistemology of skepticism (speaking of “reality” is nonsense, “real truth” is an illusion), postmodern in advocacy journalism translates into jettisoning the once-honored notion of objectivity, accepting that all perception and reporting of events is motivated by ideology and the sooner we accept it, the better. Worse, for most legacy media, it is the same ideology.

Back in the 1960s, 1970s heyday of the New Left, wrote TIME, with the war in Vietnam raging:

“New York Times [leading] columnist and associate editor Tom Wicker called objectivity the press’s “biggest weakness,” arguing that it privileged the perspectives of the powerful and caused journalists to withhold their knowledge from readers.

“Countless journalists, especially younger reporters who had been influenced by the New Left, felt the same way. ‘More young reporters reflect the philosophy of their age group and times—personal engagement, militancy, and radicalism,’ wrote New York Times editor Abe Rosenthal to a senior colleague in 1968. He lamented that they ‘question or challenge the duty of the reporter, once taken for granted, to be above the battle.’”

Advocacy journalism was and is alive and well, and the norm, in 2024 on the network news, including CNN.

Advocacy journalism was and is alive and well, and the norm, in 2024 on the network news, including CNN. But putting aside “journalism,” for the moment, there were the panels of talking heads, it seems, after every news story—to tell viewers what it meant. All were dyed-in-the-wool, polished, and experienced commentators, and all loathed Donald Trump, the Republican Party, and its (to them) incomprehensibly stubborn, benighted, “denying” supporters.

In the final weeks, of course, came the rapid-fire scare stories, so that “authoritarian,” “fascist,” “neo-Nazi,” and “Hitler” became associated with “Trump.”

How then, as I assumed, with all America watching TV, and nightly glued to these network news shows, could Americans elect Donald Trump on November 5? It seemed to me incomprehensible that the race was even “tight.”

Personally, I dismissed the news stories and the talking heads, evaluating Trump on my own terms, but I had had years of studying the issues and many, many other sources of information.

In the final weeks, of course, came the rapid-fire scare stories, so that “authoritarian,” “fascist,” “neo-Nazi,” and “Hitler” became associated with “Trump.”

Then came the Trump triumph, the joy and relief of his supporters, and, inevitably, the rush to analyze what had happened—why had so many been blindsided (again, like in 2016)?

There were many unexpected revelations, but one, I think, portends near-revolution in the future of our political debates. A week after the election, the Wall Street Journal had pulled together a wealth of polling and other data and reported on November 9.

How well had advocacy journalism, thrown into high gear by the challenge of defeating a Republican resurgence led by Donald Trump, succeeded in its mission? With that question, we come to what for me is the most astonishing development revealed by the election.

In a massive analysis of polling results, the Wall Street Journal, wrote:

“TV news remains a massive draw for Americans in the biggest moments. But younger audiences have fled, and there were signs even on election night of an overall erosion in the medium. The main three cable channels were down 32% in viewership collectively compared with 2020, to around 21 million, with CNN losing nearly half its audience.” (Emphasis added)

Specifically, the average (median) age of the major network viewers (NBC, Fox News, CNN) is 69 years old!

Where has the audience gone? To take a single example, this year, almost 40% of Americans ages 18-29 got the majority of their news from TikTok, up from less than 10% of those who did so in 2020. Males in that age group, of course, provided an unexpected and, to Democrats, dismaying surge of support for Trump.

The average (median) age of the major network viewers (NBC, Fox News, CNN) is 69 years old!

Yes, we all are aware of alternative media (some, like me, much less than others), but the numbers can be shocking. Trump sat down with podcaster Joe Rogan for three hours, an episode that drew more than 45 million views on YouTube and over 25 million listens across Spotify and other platforms.” Later, Rogan endorsed Trump’s candidacy.

The Journal cites the instance of a single individual, acting on his own. A college student in New York City who supports the Democratic Party made a video about Trump’s election victory and ran it on TikTok. It got 6.7 million views, more than twice the views for NBC News’s comparable post and double the CBS account’s views.

The WSJ poses the obvious question:

“Commentators on CNN and MSNBC routinely said Trump was a threat to democracy and played up criticism from those, including his onetime chief of staff, who said he would rule like a dictator. One question is how many persuadable people were listening.”

What about it, Kaitlyn, Anderson? One woman, a lifelong Democrat who voted for Trump, commented: “People are waking up to real conversations…,” and they aren’t taking place among the talking heads on CNN panels. What is your real priority, reporting the news or advancing an ideology?

Yeah, I know, advocacy journalism says there is no difference between the two.

Maybe they will go down in flames together, holding hands.

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About the Author: Walter Donway

Walter Donway has written and edited for Savvy Street since its inception in 2014. His essays and interpretative commentaries on breakthrough books have dealt with philosophy, politics, literature, science, history, psychology, and personalities. His new novel, "Retaking College Hill,” became Amazon’s #1 bestseller in political fiction. This year, the Atlas Society published his Pocket Guide to The Fountainhead and Romanticism Reborn--essays on the Romantic movement in literature and its 20th Century revival in Ayn Rand's novels. His collections of essays and short stories and his "Collected Poems" are available on Amazon. He lives in East Hampton with his wife, Robin.