US Elections 2024 And Media Disaster

 By Ochereome Nnanna

In Mass Communication education, we are taught that the newsman or mass media practitioner, is an impartial reporter of newsworthy events. In a democratic society, media is a social trust and arbiter between the people and the government.

In Nigeria and other democracies, the media is given a constitutional role to uphold freedom of information and hold government accountable. Indeed, the media is often given the lofty moniker of “Fourth Estate”. There are informed reasons for all this. Media is expected to perform its functions accurately, objectively and completely, eschewing bias, malice and deliberately misleading their publics for private gain.

As students in the early 1980s, apart from our local media such as Daily Times, Vanguard, The Guardian, Punch, Concord, Radio Nigeria and the NTA, we were strongly advised to voraciously consume offerings by such foreign media as the BBC, AP, UPI, Time, Newsweek, and other frontline Western media to grow.

Later on, CNN blazed the trail as the first 24-hour and highly glamourous worldwide cable television network fronted by legendary Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld in Atlanta, Georgia, the USA as from 1980. CNN pushed the BBC into the shade as it pioneered live television reporting. People rushed to acquire satellite dishes and decoders in order to enjoy the prestige of having CNN in their office or home.

The just-concluded United States general elections have exposed the mass media that betrayed the people by abandoning the core and sacred principles of journalism: objective reporting. Selfish interest ruled the instincts of many trusted media. They betrayed their publics and thus exposed themselves to disaster and rejection.

Guilty of this were the large corporate media, with CNN now owned by Warner Bros, at the forefront. Even BBC, the erstwhile touchstone for media excellence and fidelity, failed woefully. All their predictions about the possible outcome of the elections collapsed like a heap of ash.

Long before the Election Day (Tuesday, November 5, 2024), all the large corporate media, such as MSNBC, Bloomberg, Time, Newsweek and so many others which have adopted the globalist “woke” ideology and turned their backs on the founding Judeo-Christian principles of “the West”, bit the dust.

In their haste to benefit from the patronage of a technologically unified global village, the large corporate bodies, including the media, have carefully keyed into the evolving “woke” ideology of corrupted “political correctness”, “inclusivity” and “progressivism”.

“Political correctness” forbids you to call a spade a spade. Any critical comment on the dangers posed by Islamic extremism is promptly termed “Islamophobia”, ignoring the fact that Muslims daily chant war songs in their masjids against Non-Muslims. Even Muslims in America cry “death to America” and “death to Israel”. “Islamophobia” is “evil” but attacks on Christians and churches by Islamic terrorists and Antisemitism (violence against Jews) are condonable.

“Inclusivity” means not just glamourising the lifestyle of the lesbians, gays, transgender and the rest of the alphabet (LGBTQIA+) community, but also forcing it on people and punishing those who reject it. It also throws the borders open for illegal immigration to enable the globalist far-leftists gain enough adherents to permanently win elections and permanently seal their hold on power; the country can go to hell.

“Progressivism” means forcing biological males who claim to have undergone sex change to play in women’s sports, reassign the genders of children without consent from their parents, mass-murder babies in the name of abortion, bring transgender fairies to perform floor shows in kindergarten and primary schools to brainwash innocent children into accepting unnatural gender culture, and removing God and religion (especially Christianity) from the government and public spaces.

Most big companies in America with global outreaches went woke for profit. In order to catch their adverts, the big globalist corporate media not only supported these strange but socially-unhinging influences but also are hands-in-gloves with the political parties and candidates that strongly promote them.

The Democratic Party, famed as “left of centre”, was taken down this path by former President Barack Obama along with the party’s leaders such as the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and others. They spruced up Joe Biden and later Kamala Harris (touted as the most radical leftist in American politics) to stand against a strongly conservative American patriot, Donald Trump of the Republican Party.

These large corporate media abandoned their obligations to report the election objectively, choosing to stand with the Democrats and Harris against Trump. They fed their publics with corrupted interpretations and analyses of the news. They also lied outright! Their hatred of Trump was undisguised.

Americans were scared of the danger of illegal migrants coming from all over the world through the porous borders. Inflation had impoverished many, unlike at any other time in their lives, and many hungered for the re-legitimisation of God and curbing of wokeism.

These were the issues that Trump simply pounced on, with reminders of his own achievements on the economy and border controls as the 45th President of the United States. The assassination attempts on Trump decided it for most American voters. Despite the obvious indications to the contrary, the big corporate media continued to lie that Kamala was “ahead” in the polls and later falsely claimed that the candidates were running “neck-and-neck”.

Trump defeated Kamala both in the electoral college (312-226) and popular votes (74,989,915 to 71, 794, 548). Republicans seized control of the Senate with 53 to 47 and is ahead in the House with 214 as against 205 out of 435. Americans have given Trump a carte blanche to restore their country to normalcy.

Unfortunately, many Nigerian journalists and media houses swallowed the falsehoods of CNN, BBC and the others and passed on the same to their publics. None of them has apologised. The failure of the Western corporate media has morphed the fortunes of independent podcasters who followed the principles of our trade.

Media must learn from this self-inflicted disaster.

*Nnanna is a commentator on public issues