The Mainstream Media Is The Real “Problem For Democracy”

The Left just wants to keep their monopoly on what is true and what is false.

The success of conservatives on social media is a “problem for democracy,” apparently.

On Monday, former senior advisor to President Barack Obama, Dan Pfeiffer, appeared on MSNBC to discuss the prevalence of right-wing “disinformation for profit” with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, while also claiming that the online popularity of figures like Ben Shapiro, Dan Bongino and Candace Owens poses a threat to society.

Tom Elliott @tomselliott

@danpfeiffer Pfeiffer: "If you go to Facebook on a daily basis, the posts with the most engagement are from @benshapiro, @dbongino, @RealCandaceO … it should scare us the most that Ben Shapiro’s @realDailyWire has more followers than the NYT or CNN. That is a problem for democracy."

“If you go to Facebook on a daily basis, the posts with the most engagement are from Ben Shapiro, Dan Bongino, and Candace Owens. It is right-wing media content. It dwarfs progressive content. It dwarfs mainstream media content — which is actually, should be the part that should scare us the most, that Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire has more followers and engagement, many times more than The New York Times or CNN. That is a problem for democracy,” Pfeiffer said.

Now, the “success” of conservatives on social media is demonstrably clear. According to NewsWhip, the top web publisher by Facebook engagement in the first quarter of 2022 was The Daily Wire with 97.6 million engagements. NBC was in second place with 93.6 million engagements, followed by The Daily Mail at 80.2 million and Fox News with 56.9 million. Meanwhile, other mainstream media giants in the United States are much further down the list: CNN has just 46 million engagements on Facebook, CBS has 40 million and The New York Times has 32.9 million.

So, given that 86% of Americans get news from digital devices, compared to 68% from television, 50% from radio and just 32% from print publications, one could presume that the mainstream media is simply in decline.

But the mainstream media’s drastic concern over the dominance of conservative figures and outlets on social media seems overblown when we look at the internet more broadly. In December 2021 alone, CNN.com dominated English-language news websites in the United States, with 399.4 million visits. MSN.com was second with 359.5 million, Fox News was third with 266.2 million, and The New York Times was fourth with 260.7 million.

So what are they complaining about? How can Pfeiffer and others seriously claim that undoubtedly popular figures like Shapiro, Bongino and Owens pose a “problem for democracy” in the world of online “misinformation” when a massive proportion of the online world is largely controlled by the mainstream media?

Well, it’s because the Left delight in projecting their own worst traits onto their enemies.