Is public trust in the media completely broken? Can it ever be fixed? The last Gallup poll found only 17 percent said they have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in newspapers, and only 14 percent said that for television news. Former ABC News political director Mark Halperin explores how this has happened, and how he would try to fix it.
Halperin told me and MRC CEO David Bozell that this isn't just a Trump phenomenon, but a long-term decline. He said if he were assigned to fix the trust issue, he would hire reporters who don't have an ideological agenda. Hire "old-fashioned reporters" who cover the news that holds all powerful people accountable, and acknowledge any mistakes that were made.
We discussed how Halperin was the first journalist to report in 2024 that after weeks of angst over a fiasco of a presidential debate performance, President Biden was planning soon to withdraw from the presidential race, a report that other media outlets did not join in reporting. Why? Did they all just believe denials from Biden campaign personnel? It didn't take long to figure out Halperin was right, and the Biden campaign was wrong. Halperin told us this was the third Democrat campaign in a row to manipulate around the actual primary process to ordain a favorite.
So what does this signal for the Democrats in 2028? Halperin argues that while the number of self-described socialists in Congress won't be a majority of elected Democrats, a majority of Democratic voters are pro-socialist, making it difficult for the party establishment to protest the socialist ascent too much.
We also discussed the one-year anniversary of the assassination of Charlie Kirk on a college campus in Utah, and what Charlie meant to the conservative movement. Enjoy the podcast below. The audio is here.
