'60 Minutes' Lesley Stahl is ‘extremely worried’ about corporate media going by the wayside
The press is in a state of extreme distress over Donald Trump's reelection. Their relationship with Trump is akin to the antonym of the poem Humpty Dumpty.
No amount of media pressure could dismantle Humpty Dumpty, even though they are the king's horses and men. Their incessant yelling about his danger just serves to strengthen his position, as Breitbart News reported.
At the 92nd Street Y in New York City, Lesley Stahl, a longtime CBS News correspondent, and Peggy Noonan, a columnist, had a discussion. They both agreed that the legacy media have been "fraying" for twenty years, according to Noonan.
From the Reporter
"I'm extremely worried about the press," Stahl said, as she dragged out her usual story about Trump and press criticism.
"I once asked Donald Trump, why do you keep pounding on the press? This was right after he won, in 2016 ... It's kinda boring, you say the same thing over and over, and you won! It's time to drop it!"
Strangely, no news outlets have mentioned that "Well, Trump won, so it's kind of boring to keep criticizing him, saying the same thing over and over."
Stahl said she has asked why he would do it, and Trump replied: "I do it, and I repeat it, because the more I do that, the less people are going to believe you when you say negative things about me ... And it's happened!"
Trust in the Media
There has never been a lower level of public trust in the media since the invention of television. Stahl treats the story as if it were malicious, yet CBS never aired the purported Trump comment.
Unlike the Stahl shtick, this one works by attacking Trump repeatedly; the more I do it, the less credible Trump's attacks on the press will sound. That struggle, nevertheless, he has won.
"I despair, seriously. I worry greatly," Stahl said. "We're at a point where if the President of the United States is going to say, 'Legacy media is dead' ... It is, kind of, sort of hobbling right now. And I don't know how it recovers. I'm very dark about it."
A Common Mistake
As some have pointed out, there is a difference between an unpopular press and the demise of press freedom; Noonan erred in linking the two.
The press isn't automatically made saintly by the First Amendment. You can feel bad about the press's performance without putting an end to the First Amendment. Freedom of expression is that it's the freedom to express without government interference.
Stahl's misnomer was ignored by Noonan. If she wanted to know if CBS or "60 Minutes" ever did anything to damage public faith in the news, she could ask that question. Rather presented the American people with false documents regarding George W. Bush on "60 Minutes II."
Lesley Stahl gained notoriety with Republicans when, in 2020, she admonished Trump for using the unverifiable Hunter Biden laptop in his reports. No longer employed by CBS, former reporter Catherine Herridge confirmed the laptop's authenticity in 2022.