Beyond the media’s credibility, influence and audience

It has become a tradition that when election outcomes go against a major politician highly touted in the institutionalized media, the media turns searchlight on itself. It asks questions about the role it has played, which is good. After the latest US presidential election where Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump, part of the questions institutionalised media raised was why the electorates didn’t trust them. One journalist submits that the defeat of “Kamala Harris is raising questions about the media’s credibility, influence, and audience.” Even while the campaign lasted I noticed Western media left something out as usual. The journalist asking about credibility after the US election left the same thing out. I shall return to it, linking this to Nigeria’s 2023 election.

There’s no doubt that the media plays a vital role in the election. And it’ll continue to have a say in any polity, extending far beyond election. I have reasons, however, to think that focusing attention on the “credibility, influence, and audience” of the media after the outcome of each election is the same as election campaign coverage which emphasizes the relevance of the media in the process without explicitly saying so. The election process isn’t and can’t be about the media alone. Of course, during the campaigns, many people searched for news in the traditional media, until social media emerged to provide alternative sources. Post-election, asking why voters don’t do what the media said calls attention to the media only to the detriment of other actors, a phenomenon that has continued since the advent of TV coverage of election campaigns in Western nations. I think leaving out other actors will continue to draw the same outcome. I shall return to this point too.

Meanwhile, one US political writer says many citizens don’t even read what is written in the traditional newspapers; this too is oversimplifying it. Many people read, and they watch TV. It’s just that their minds are sometimes made up on some issues already.  On its part, the media informs about elections and can influence. But voters don’t need the media to make up their minds on some unfolding issues sans the economy. A political commentator would do better telling viewers which economic indices under whose presidency would work better for them, not how their child should be taught in school to think a boy being born as a boy is not true, that a girl being born as a girl is not true and that minors can change their gender as minors. That’s getting too close to the heart for some parents and they speak through the ballot.

The media can inform and as such help voters make their choices, but the media doesn’t decide for voters. I think the Western media increasingly sees itself as the decider and it’s the reason it turns attention on itself after each election, wondering why voters don’t trust it. Voters don’t need to vote who the media says is better, but this is what Western media seems to think voters should do. It’s where Western media gets it wrong and will continue to if it doesn’t drop such mentality. It also seems to me that each time the media favours a candidate and the candidate wins western media takes the credit for itself, overlooking other actors and factors. I think 2016 proved this as being wrong just as 2024 did. That the media wasn’t for Hillary Clinton couldn’t have been the reason Donald Trump won in 2016. For me, the fact that Trump won in 2024 when the media was for Kamala Harris established this view. And don’t forget Neil Kinnock in the UK in the 1992 election; the media and opinion polls projected him but voters had a different idea.

I imagine US voters who didn’t feel so strongly enough about some issues to cast their votes in 2020 did in 2024. But Western media appears to think what makes voters vote in the manner they do is what it projects. Voters vote sometimes because of the party they belong to, vote across party lines for a candidate they like, or vote because of issues a candidate favours. We shouldn’t forget that leaders were elected in the Greek city-states when modern media wasn’t known. Americans had been voting for their leaders at a time when there was no TV, radio, or newspaper as we know it today. So, calling attention to the confidence deficit on the part of the media after each election is, to me, still a means of promoting the media, continuously pushing its relevance in the face of the public.

There’s no problem with this except that it doesn’t address fundamental issues which made US electorates behave in the manner they did. I think many citizens may be seeing through this and so refuse to be swayed, that is, going by the outcomes of the 2016 and 2024 US elections. This situation brings to mind the pre- and post-2023 presidential election situation in Nigeria where many media platforms practically endorsed different candidates. Their coverage and the kind of commentators they brought to their studios said it all. Some Nigerian newspapers published materials meant to sway the electorate to the side of the candidate they preferred. Some were citing the national economic situation and insecurity etc. as reasons the ruling party would lose. I explained at the time that politics was local and that what would inform who people would vote at each polling unit might not include the national challenges some were citing.

In the north, for instance, and I had been on campaign trails in the North-West and North-East, I knew people followed their local politicians regarding which party and which candidate they should vote. Locals don’t talk about insecurity and which party caused it, rather they talk about who their local political leader follows. A significant number of such influential political leaders in the north had openly declared for the eventual winner. How a presidential candidate who didn’t have even posters in some major cities in northern Nigeria wanted to win the 2023 presidential election in Nigeria, I didn’t know. I travelled across states in the north and I pointed this out at the time. Many news platforms continued with their narrative though, but the outcome of the 2023 election in Nigeria showed differently. A similar occurrence happened in the 2024 US elections both for the White House and the Congress where the Republican Party took the majority number of seats. It was an emphatic victory indicating that the minds of the majority of American voters were the opposite of what institutionalised media projected.  Why was this the case?

As I had previously stated, the media attack on Hillary Clinton in 2016 wasn’t the reason her opponent won. Trump, at that time, stood for issues that mattered to the majority of voters. In 2024, media support for Harris didn’t translate into victory for her. It seemed to me that, on both occasions, Americans voted between two issues, not between two candidates. The issues that mattered to the majority of voters and to which voters identified Trump were what gave him victory. And the issues were many. One American voter makes a long list of why she voted for Trump, and it’s full of the issues that some refer to as woke ideology, not just the economy.  However, pre-election, the media left such issues out to the extent that one commentator asked if media platforms and their commentators reflected the views of Trump’s supporters. They didn’t.

Meanwhile, issues were what the majority of voters cared about, not the character of both presidential candidates.

Nonetheless, the US election ended and institutionalised media was assessing the outcome by focusing on itself, asking why it lost credibility, influence, and audience. The media isn’t only asking the wrong questions, it’s looking in the wrong places for answers. Like it did during the campaigns, it wasn’t discussing, post-election, the fact that the majority of voters saw issues differently from how the liberal media saw it. Meanwhile, the majority of US voters wanted to vote based on what they held dear, not what the media said was dear. They wanted to vote based on who represented their reality. If Western media continues to talk about its credibility without a decision to fairly reflect the majority of voters’ reality, it’ll continue to face the same outcome.