09 Aug Op-Ed: Is watchdog journalism in irreversible decline?
By,
Willie A. Lora, Senior Fellow, MSI²
The Donald Trump phenomenon has challenged the ethical and political complicity of the US corporate media.
The primary mission of journalism is to inform the public, hold public authorities accountable, and promote informed decision-making. This entails seeking the truth, acting in the public interest, and respecting ethical standards. Journalists act as watchdogs, reporting on issues relevant to their communities and contributing to the proper functioning of a democratic society.
The strength or weakness of democracies around the world has been accompanied by a power, not elected but entrusted by citizens, as a vital instrument of information, so that people can make decisions that directly influence their daily lives and those of their communities. Journalism and the media, that oversight instrument, are today plagued by misinformation, defamation lawsuits, very little credibility, and are largely politicized.
The most famous and revered news anchor in U.S. history, Walter Cronkite, once said: “As anchor of the CBS Evening News, I have closed the newscast for nearly 20 years by saying something very simple. This is the way things are. To me, that describes the highest ideal of a journalist: to report the facts as they are, regardless of the consequences or controversies arising from those facts.”
But how much has journalism changed since Walter Cronkite’s famous quote? Quite a bit. A recent Gallup poll shows that trust in the media and journalism is at one of its lowest points in history, at 31%, compared to 76% in the 1970s. This study also reflects a significant gap in media credibility between the two major political currents in the country, the conservative and the liberal. Fifty-four percent of liberals (Democrats) trust the mainstream media, compared to 12% of conservatives (Republicans), clearly demonstrating a significant political bias in the way information is consumed based on what is presented to their audiences.
We could point to two important moments in the industry’s history that might give us an indication of how trust within the media population began to deteriorate. Although the major traditional media conglomerates—such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and FOX Corp.—are mostly headquartered in cities with a markedly liberal orientation, such as New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Atlanta, growing political polarization has led much of their coverage to shift from everyday issues to a more intense, divisive, and heavily biased news agenda.
One of those moments of important change in the industry was when, upon becoming public companies on the stock exchange, the focus shifted from reporting the most important and relevant stories for the country and its communities to how to maintain the value of the companies’ shares. This change put a lot of pressure on company leaders to not only seek to maximize their profits and, therefore, maintain and increase the value of their shares, but also to prioritize journalistic responsibilities and ethical and objective reporting to the public.
This forced the industry to become closer to political parties and companies linked to politics in order to reach commercial agreements and thus increase profits, something that was previously viewed as an unethical practice. Evidence of this is that, during the last two or three presidential cycles, coverage of political events has been as polarized as the country itself. On the industry side, the model became: the more political coverage they did, the more sales opportunities they would have.
According to a Reuters analysis, total political advertising spending in 2024 surpassed $10 billion, marking an all-time high. Some sources estimate the total could reach $12.3 billion, representing a 24% increase over the 2020 election cycle. Since the start of the cycle in January 2023, Democrats have outspent Republicans in advertising spending: $5 billion to $4.1 billion.
These numbers reflect an important reason why traditional media outlets have shifted to becoming vehicles for partisan and political messages, far beyond the original mandate of journalistic work that Cronkite and many other original journalists interpreted as journalistic responsibility.
The other important moment that changed the role of the media was the announcement on June 16, 2015, by businessman Donald J. Trump that he was seeking the Republican nomination for president of the United States. This reality was confirmed during the 2016 elections, when he became the 45th president of the United States. This election surprised the country because the vast majority of media outlets predicted that, based on “their polls,” former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, would easily win the presidential election. The day before the elections, the New York Times reported that Secretary Clinton was 85% sure to win, which was not the case.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified a report on the Obama administration’s “hoax” on Russia, revealing “overwhelming evidence” showing how, after Trump won the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton, then-President Barack Obama and his national security team laid the groundwork for what would become a years-long investigation into Trump-Russia collusion. The director explained in an interview on Fox News that, “First of all, they [the media] don’t want the American people to know the truth. But they also recognize the complicity of the mainstream media in this, having received preliminary outlines of this false intelligence assessment fabricated by President Obama, which John Brennan and James Clapper created without any verification, without proper journalistic integrity in analyzing what they were being given. They received it and published it almost immediately.”
Even today, the media still refuses to cover this story in order to give more prominence to the case of child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, seeking to change the narrative of the most significant political scandal in a generation, when they were absent from the Epstein case during the previous administration.
In these 9 years since President Trump’s first election, where high-profile news stories were ignored and in many cases ridiculed by these liberal media outlets, which Director Gabbard blames for complicity, ended up being true such as: two impeachments, one of them with a false report that became known as the “Steele Dossier” now discredited, the famous computer of former President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, which the media served as a sounding board for the intelligence services by repeating a false statement that the computer story was a Russian propaganda operation, which even had 51 former intelligence agents sign a letter including three former CIA directors stating what they knew was false since the FBI had that computer in its possession almost a year before publishing that letter, the story of COVID-19 and the censorship that was applied to people and institutions that differed from the official versions.
In the battle to control media narratives, radio has been one of the tools on which political interests have also focused their guns. The latest victim has been one of South Florida’s most iconic radio stations, the famous Radio Mambí, which announced the layoff of its entire staff and the imminent closure of its operations. Latino Media Network (LMN), backed by a fund linked to George Soros, acquired 18 radio stations in 10 key markets, including Miami, Florida.
Among the stations are Radio Mambí (WQBA and WAQI), two well-known Spanish-language AM stations that have historically served the Cuban-American exile community in South Florida, with a frequently conservative editorial line. LMN is led by Stephanie Valencia, former President Barack Obama’s director of Latino outreach, and Democratic activist Jess Morales Rocketto, who signed an agreement to purchase these stations for $60 million.
Political polarization has also given rise to a range of programs and podcasts that exist outside of traditional media, allowing people to consume content in different ways and in line with their political ideologies. This is reflected in the collapse of ratings in traditional media, known as “Cable News,” where audiences have fallen by as much as 42% in some cases, as in the case of CNN, from July 2024 to the same date in 2025.
The financial costs to traditional media outlets due to lawsuits alleging misinformation, defamation, and information manipulation have also impacted their credibility and business model.
Paramount Global, owner of CBS and its show “60 Minutes,” reached an agreement with President Trump to pay him $16 million for manipulating an interview with former Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. In the interview, the show edited a response to a question to the Democratic candidate, completely changing it to make it sound coherent when the answer was different. Also, ABC News and its show “This Week,” chaired by Bill Clinton’s former White House communications director, paid President Trump’s library fund $15 million for claiming that President Trump had sexually assaulted Jean Carroll, something that was not true.
I think Walter Cronkite must be asking himself: “How far have we come?” Why did we stray so far from our responsibilities? Why did our political biases take priority over our social responsibility? Why did we abandon common sense? Why did we let hatred for one person lead us to commit irreparable damage to the industry? There are many questions that both Cronkite and many of our readers ask ourselves. But the most valuable question is, why did we stop using critical thinking, regardless of who heads a publicly trusted agency? I believe that if this had been practiced at all levels with the goal of serving the common good, the industry would not be where it is, much less would we be questioning whether this damage can be reversed. My hope is that it can be achieved in this generation, but my optimism fades more and more every day, considering that, despite these realities, there are no signs that this will change, at least in the next few years.
Sources: AOL, AP News (Associated Press), Axios, BrainyQuote, Brennan Center, CiberCuba, Cord Cutters News, Gallup, Reuters, The New York Times, WLRN.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Miami Strategic Intelligence Institute (MSI²).