The MSM has forgotten its readers – thank goodness the industry media hasn’t
Bored with the Epstein files? As I write Prince Andrew is arrested for misconduct in public office and there’s yet another round of jaw-dropping eye-popping disclosures, Shock horror? Come on. We have long been aware of Epstein’s exploitative sex crimes against minors and Maxwell’s grooming of victims. There have been interviews, documentaries…nay even time for books. The list goes on.
The mainstream media (MSM) flocks in a frenzy to tell us yet again that when politicians or royalty get too close to billionaires, national interests are on the line.
Playing the media at their own game
But here’s the rub. There was no excitement or a whiff of financial corruption, just gob-smacking digital silence on a recent Wall Street Journal scoop involving a UAE microchip contract and $500 million investment in a Trump-owned firm.
Hey MSM – that’s Donald Trump we’re talking about – he whom you loathe, and detest. Many of you suffer from Trump derangement syndrome… but not it seems last week!
Just as busy Fridays, when journalists are off on their weekend jaunts, are the best time to bury bad news, so sex and scandals at the highest-level trumps even Trump!
The MSM has always had an opinion – and so have we
Yes, we can accuse the MSM of having a ‘bias’: Washington Post versus Wahington Times, New York Times versus the New York Post, the Guardian versus the Daily Telegraph. Le Figaro versus L’humanite, the FAZ versus Die Welt The list is legion in every country. Even the dubious middle grounders like Le Monde, The Times, the WSJ, the FT all have their moments and that’s not to mention the global mass of tabloids, the original arbiters to some of fake news.
The MSM is read by the great and the good, and the person on the Clapham Omnibus or the NY subway as my old Editor used to say.
He also used to say, people buy a newspaper not to educate themselves – but to confirm their prejudices and beliefs.
Some do it in a counter-intuitive way – my left-leaning managing editor used to religiously buy the right-leaning national newspaper so he could spit out expletives of horror and angst as he read the copy.
Remember – same story but seen through a different pair of spectacles. As our founder and chairman says: “only the words change!”
Industry experts vote with their eyes
So, three cheers for technology and the vertical industry market media, which is where I found my resting place. Yes, their readership votes but their main priority in reading this media is to deal with issues in running their business and getting insight into just how new technologies will help. We said it before during the Covid ‘epidemic’ – another MSM farce of muddled coverage led more by political agendas than by investigative journalism.
Trust in the MSM is at an all-time low – take an eye-wipe of these stats 2024/25. These figures come at a time of deep political and economic uncertainty and destructive conflicts around the world. It’s a time when surely evidence-based and analytical journalism should be thriving? Newspapers flying off digital shelves, and broadcast media and web traffic booming.
Digging their own digital grave
But as this Reuters report shows, the reality is very different with traditional news media in most countries struggling to connect with much of the public, with declining engagement, low trust, and stagnating digital subscriptions.
As the MSM follows stories like lemmings, it sometimes looks just too personal. From royalty to Bill Gates, from Naom Chomsky to the DNA brain Watson, the MSM newsrooms today will be abuzz – hey guys you are not going to believe this one!
These newsrooms have forgotten their readers. No wonder readership and trust is at an all-time low. And what’s more they’re letting Donald Trump once again get one over on them in the newsfeed that he loves to hate – the MSM.
Judith Ingleton-Beer is CEO of IBA International.
