New Year, new election season, but will the media turn a new page? The 2020 election brought on much controversy and some believe divided the country more than unified it.“They made a bunch [of mistakes] in 2020, mostly with regard to parroting people in positions of authority,” Daily Caller Editor-in-Chief, Geoff Ingersoll told Barrett News Media in an email exchange.
“What I’m referring to specifically is school closures that fall, which they almost uniformly supported, vilifying any dissenting voices, despite data showing there was very little risk to children,” Ingersoll said. What’s more, Ingersoll feels the media missed two key stories in 2020 saying, “[The] lab leak hypothesis and Hunter Biden’s laptop, were viciously suppressed when media teamed up with compromised scientists and highly questionable former spies.”
In March 2020, the intelligence community wasn’t ruling out a lab leak in China, so why was the media? A timeline of events presented by The Washington Post shows the back and forth on the theory mostly came due to pushback from China and the World Health Organization.
Ingersoll believes the information was readily available and the lab leak was no longer a ‘theory’ by early 2020. “Also, much of the data and information concerning the Wuhan lab and so-called ‘gain of function’ research, along with aid coming from NIH and NIAID — the latter of which Fauci headed up at the time — was already in the public domain come January 2020,” he said.
Ingersoll believes the Wuhan lab leak shouldn’t be called a conspiracy but his bigger concern for the 2024 election is on the Hunter Biden laptop. “Independent media has quite a focus on the story. I, for one, have my only investigative reporter on it,” Ingersoll added, “For what it’s worth, NYT broke the Clinton server story several years ago, where are they on Hunter’s finances?”
The Hunter Biden laptop story, first brushed off by legacy media, was verified 769 days after its October 2020 release. Something Ingersoll believes should not have happened.
“We were the first to verify the laptop’s contents with Google’s servers approximately a week before the election. With how little resources we have, no excuse for corporate media to come up short in this regard.”
In 2022, Technometrica Institute of Policy and Politics asked if Americans believe the laptop is real, broken down by party, 89% of Republicans, 61% of Democrats, and 74% of Independents all said, yes it’s real. The poll also added 79% of Americans believe Donald Trump would have won the 2020 election if Hunter’s laptop had been covered appropriately.
Some on the left of the aisle will say the Daily Caller editor’s concern about Hunter Biden’s finances and the laptop is biased. To use President Joe Biden’s words from 2020, “My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China.”
Ingersoll called this divide not left versus right news but corporate versus independent journalism. “The corporate, establishment media has deep ties to the political establishment. Independent media does not. Their coverage reflects [it],” Ingersoll said.
A 2022 Pew Institute Research Study supports Ingersoll’s theory, that 43% of journalists believe their colleagues are often unable to keep their own views out of stories. More importantly, 55% of journalists believe when reporting the news, every side does not always deserve equal coverage.
This new feeling of coverage is being seen by Americans, a joint Associated Press and Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights poll from May found that 45% of Americans have little to no confidence in the news media’s ability to report the news fully and fairly.
Looking more closely four in 10 of those surveyed say the press is doing more to hurt American democracy. Two in 10 say the press is doing more to protect democracy. The remaining four did not agree with either statement. Across all parties, those polled believe misinformation is to blame for lack of trust in the media.
As it relates to 2024 Ingersoll believes the most important thing for social and legacy media outlets to do is, “Don’t f— up,” elaborating more he said, “Skepticism, especially for confirmation bias. Comprehension. Errors of omission almost always cloud over the central thesis of a story, even if it’s incontrovertibly true.”
When pressed on if The Daily Caller made mistakes in 2020 Ingersoll said, “No, The Daily Caller pitched a perfect game.”
As for the outlet’s strategy for 2024, Ingersoll summed it up in 3 words, “Aggression. Fairness. Accuracy.”
Ingersoll’s hopes for 2024 are not high when it comes to truthfulness from the media, “The establishment and corporate media won’t change substantively until they experience a near-complete collapse of their credibility.”
In the upcoming election cycle, the Daily Caller editor-in-chief believes the most important thing to know for November 2024 is, “Where, when, and how they can vote.” His advice for consuming media is simple, “Reading everything, even stuff you hate,” later adding, “All of [the news] is produced by flawed people, some more than others.”
Krystina Alarcon Carroll is a news media columnist and features writer for Barrett Media. She has experience in almost every facet of the industry including: digital and print news; live, streamed, and syndicated TV; documentary and film productions. Her prior employers have included NY1 and Fox News Digital and the Law & Crime Network. You can find Krystina on X (formerly twitter) @KrystinaAlaCarr.
