I read an article recently that left wing comedians Jim Gaffigan and Kathy Griffin are complaining that they have lost much of their audience. They blame it on intolerant Trump supporters who disagreed with their opposition to Donald Trump, and stopped coming to their shows. Both entertainers showed no remorse for alienating Trump voters, and their comments show they still aren’t able to grasp why a big part of their audience has abandoned them.

The same is true for the mainstream news media. Left wing news outlets blame their decline in viewership on Trump’s supporters, as if there is some grand conspiracy to intentionally sabotage their ratings. They just don’t comprehend the situation. Conservative members of their audience are rejecting them for three primary reasons; the audience doesn’t like being insulted, doesn’t like being lied to, and has found other alternatives to get the information they provide.

I remember watching Gaffigan perform at the Alaska State Fair a few years ago. He was an entertaining comedian. I enjoyed his show, especially his self-deprecating humor and funny observations about Alaska. This was in 2018, when he still attempted to entertain without political bias. After the 2020 election, Gaffigan became politically vicious. He used foul language to describe Trump supporters in a caustic unfunny way. As a consequence, half of his audience stopped coming to his shows. I am sure it has had a negative financial impact on his career. If he were self-aware, Gaffigan would have offered a sincere apology to the people he offended, but that won’t happen.

The same is true of the mainstream media. At one time the major newspapers and the three broadcast television channels dominated the distribution of news to the American public. They were trusted by the American people be fair and honest. We now know, based on the news coverage of the Covid pandemic and the reporting on the 2020 election, neither of those things is true.

In both instances, we know that the government and their allies in the press attempted to pass off a narrative that was not 100% factually correct and was aligned with left-of-center political views. Whether it was an attempt to lie and push a false narrative, or just an effort to preserve the public’s faith in a faulty government is not known. Whatever the reason, the American public has figured out the MSM is unreliable, and has a left-wing bias. As a consequence, many conservatives have decided to get their news from more trustworthy sources.

This isn’t just my opinion. The Pew Research Center chart on the right shows that since the 90s, when the internet became a source for news, newspaper readership has declined, and this trend has grown much worse since Donald Trump entered politics in 2015. Nobody is reading newspapers anymore, not even the local ones here in Alaska.

A similar observation can be made about the left leaning television news channels. MSNBC has lost more than half of its audience since election day, 2024, and CNN is down by 40%. It gotten so bad around Christmas time that CNN, the once most trusted name in news, had a smaller audience than the Food Network or the Hallmark movie channel.

People who used to be consumers of mainstream news and entertainment probably had the same awakening that I did during Covid. I remember watching a senate hearing where Doctor Peter McCullough gave testimony that was very informative. Dr. McCullough expressed concerns about the safety of the new Covid vaccinations, saying that their development was too hurried to be confident they were completely safe. After he expressed views different from the government’s official position McCullough was vilified by the news media.

Their vicious attacks on this doctor opened my eyes to the bias present in most mainstream media. It became obvious they were just parroting whatever their government sources told them, making no real attempt at journalism. I discovered that to get honest reporting, I had to go to online news sites. While there is also bias present there, at least I am aware that it exists, and can search around and filter it out.

One enduring result of the Covid pandemic is that conservative Americans have forever lost faith in the mainstream media. We no longer trust them and will never rely on them to get news and information again. Hence the reason that comedians like Jim Gaffigan and opinion journalists like Rachel Maddow of MSNBC are complaining. Nobody listens to their opinions anymore, and mainstream media is dying.

If you are reading this post, you probably have an open mind and are seeking alternative sources for your news and information. The liberals hate that, but on this Substack divergent opinions are welcome. I appreciate my audience and will respectfully answer every comment, especially those whose opinions disagree with my own. Thank you for reading and welcome to the information revolution.

With respect to where I get my news, I use the following sources for Information.

ALASKA NEWS

— Must Read Alaska

— Alaska Watchman

NATIONAL PODCASTS

— Steve Bannon’s War room

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION WEBSITES

— Breitbart.com

— Real Clear Politics

— The Gateway Pundit

— The Tucker Carlson Network

The views expressed here are those of the authors. Read more posts at Seward’s Folly substack.

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