Looking at the U.S. election from a slight distance (Canada), I would say that the big losers are the legacy mainstream media.

The U.S. Democratic Party (established approximately 1820) will survive and regroup. But the flailing big media insisted that the race was razor close —and it wasn’t.

Why did they call it so wrong? They had ONE job, after all, and…

Let’s go back to last week when Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos refused to endorse a candidate. He was expected to endorse Kamala Harris and when he didn’t, some top journalists resigned in a huff.

Bezos had come to see endorsing a candidate as part of the problem of declining trust in media. The journalists saw him as betraying them by not endorsing their candidate.

Well, at that point, the problem of why legacy mainstream media are on the skids was coming sharply into focus: The journalists weren’t reporters; they were Harris fans. So why should anyone other than the campaign and its supporters be paying much attention to them?

When Harris lost yesterday — clearly and obviously, not by a razor-thin margin — this problem came into focus even more sharply: The journalists had been breaking Rule 1 of news coverage: listen

So often, we heard them talking about how they thought and felt about a Trump win. Rarely did we hear much about how Jake, the chip shop owner, or Juanita, the night duty nurse. might feel. Media people were focused on themselves rather than on the people they were paid to try to understand, as the low ratings attested. But why were they doing so?

They were doing so because the media they represent were in decline already. And they were in decline because their “gatekeeper” model of news gathering and dissemination is obsolete.

Electronics and the internet have crashed all types of costs and reduced many barriers for those who want to disseminate news. Granted, those who want to disseminate news can include terrorists, racists, and lunatics. But it also includes thousands of responsible content providers, many with hundreds of thousands of followers. They do not need to be associated with a “name” publication any more in order to publish, achieve credibility, or make a living. That’s new and it is here to stay.

X’s owner and Chief Technology Officer Elon Musk nailed the new reality this morning:

The reality of this election was plain to see on X, while most legacy media lied relentlessly to the public.

You are the media now.

Please post your thoughts & observations on X, correct others when wrong and we will have at least one place in the world where you can come to find the truth.

Legacy media is dead. Long live citizen journalism!

The US presidential campaign was further proof of what Elon Musk has been repeatedly predicting: citizen journalism is overtaking traditional media.

While the winning candidate appeared in several independent podcasts for long… pic.twitter.com/B4TgCesYq4

— ELON FACTS (@ElonFactsX) November 6, 2024

The legacy media will now probably just continue to decline — but not silently.

Note: Musk’s personal chances of getting deported from the United States have, incidentally, decreased as a result of the Trump win (he is expected to have a position with the government).