A couple of days after the election, after the elitists in the media had finally absorbed the shock and had finished re-writing all of those well-researched pieces on “Madam President,” we finally got an explanation as to why America had made such a tragic, apocalyptic mistake: The rubes were tricked by an onslaught of fake news.
Yes, we learned that fake news stories eclipsed stories from mainstream media sources on Facebook, where millions passed around fictional tales originating from Macedonia, Moscow, and all points in between. Could this have decided the election for Donald Trump? How could American voters make the right decision if they went out on election day under the impression that Pope Francis had endorsed Trump?
Of course, while the usual suspects are putting a spotlight on fictional news that some writers just made up to get clicks, their real target is alternative media. They don’t care about outright nonsense; they care about the growing influence of conservative sites like Breitbart and the Drudge Report. The stories from these sites have a slant, but they aren’t fictional. And unlike the absurd National Enquirer-level stories that have gotten all the attention, these sites actually do have a significant influence on the electorate.
But most of all, they are looking anywhere and everywhere to find something to blame other than themselves.
Here’s what they can’t bring themselves to admit: That their “liberal bias” is no longer just something that Rush Limbaugh listeners believe in, like some kind of sour-grapes conspiracy theory. It’s a proven fact, and at least half the country has caught on. They caught on thanks to Fox News, Limbaugh, and conservative online media, but mostly they caught on because the mainstream media threw subtlety to the wind. They stopped trying to hide it. We saw New York Times editorials basically admitting that they had a responsibility to stop Trump. We saw leaked emails showing collusion between the Clinton campaign and news organizations like CNN. And we saw, day in and day out, the media tell us: We’re with her.
If Hillary had won, we wouldn’t be hearing this narrative about fake news swaying the election. Instead, the major media outlets would have celebrated their astounding ability to influence the public and doubled down on their liberal biases. Ultimately, these outlets were the architect of their own destruction. They just don’t have the courage to admit it.
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