“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and the guilty innocent, and that’s power. They have control of the masses.” -Malcom X

Nowhere is this quote more ubiquitous than in the United States political system, where the media does everything in its power to push their agendas and help their candidates win races. Despite the fact that Joe Biden won the presidential race, Republicans kept more senate seats than expected and made eyebrow-raising gains (11 seats) in the House of Representatives. Although the media was mostly on their side, Democrats still struggled this election.

The house races prove that the media failed their bosses in Washington. They’re not nearly as powerful a political weapon as they once were. Combine this with their mistake of overemphasizing the presidential race and it becomes clear why CNBC and Vox couldn’t help their friends in congress. 

Let’s start with their overemphasis on Trump. It’s no question that CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and most other major media outlets were overwhelmingly opposed to Trump’s presidency and did everything in their power to bring him down. They analyzed every moronic statement Trump made at 2 AM on Twitter and sent it to the front page. They slammed him for appointing Brett Kavanaugh to the supreme court despite assault allegations while mostly ignoring allegations against Biden. They failed to cover every story that would harm Joe Biden’s 2020 chances. Their allies in big tech censored The New York Post because it reported on the alleged Hunter Biden scandal, where Joe Biden’s son supposedly used his father’s political clout to wrongfully land a well-paying job on a powerful Ukranian energy firm. (as per The Wall Street Journal) Once they did hear about it, 17% of voters say they would have switched their votes. (as per the Media Research Centre) It’s difficult to deny that Biden had nearly the full force of the establishment media on his side. 

Yet it was still a tight race. He took Georgia and Pennsylvania by 0.2% and Arizona by 0.3%. (as per the AP) If someone took 60,000 selective Biden votes and swapped them to Trump votes they could alter the results of the election. This is insanely close when one considers that more than 159 million people voted. 

The truth is, the media’s full power was just barely enough to get Biden by in the 2020 election. They had nothing left over to combat the republican establishment and stop them from winning down ballot. While the media skewered Trump and badly damaged his nationwide image, they left his allies in congress unscathed. It’s no secret that Trump disavows the Washington establishment and is often seen as a political outsider. Despite the fact that many Republicans stood by Trump, they didn’t suffer from attacks on him. 

The fact that the media struggled so much in this election illustrates the fact that their influence is waning. As they grow more and more partisan, the people see them as less and less credible. A Pew research poll reveals that 54% of Americans have “Not too much” or even “none at all” faith in the media. Only 6% trust their media “a great deal.” 63% of them see media skepticism as a good thing for society. Why has this happened? 

It has a direct correlation with the rise of “sensationalism” in the media. As explained by West Virginia University research repository, this is when the media uses intentionally provocative and emotionally charged content in order to gain views and shares, increasing their ad revenue at the expense of their credibility. More than a third of middle market news stories fit this depiction, as per the repository. This is an insane amount when compared to the much lower percentages from just a decade ago. 

When the media selects stories in order to achieve desired political effects and they embrace sensationalism over objective analysis, it’s common sense that ordinary citizens will lose their faith in the media and deny them influence. When they overemphasize the presidential election and fail to take on the rest of their rivals, it makes sense why Republicans made gains in the house of representatives. 

Elections are complicated things. There are countless factors that affect who wins which races and by what margins. However, there’s little doubt that the mainstream media plays a major part in every election cycle. Understanding how America’s free “marketplace of ideas” works is essential to figuring out how these elections play out in the first place. 

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