The New York Times laments digging through old tweets, Joe Biden collapses in the polling,

and New York proves education is about leveling and not achievement. I'm Ben Shapiro. This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

All righty. Well, a lot of folks in the media seem to believe that their industry is in serious trouble. And I think that the reason that the industry is in serious trouble is because journalism has lost its credibility with the American people. I mean, all too often, you look at the New York Times and you realize this is an activist newspaper. You look at CNN, you realize this is an activist newspaper. People blame that on President Trump in the media. They blame that on President Trump. All the journalists say, oh, well, it's Trump shouting fake news at the top of the... That's the problem. Guys, a lot of us didn't trust you before, and we don't trust you now, specifically now that the mask is off with regard to President Trump. I mean, it is very obvious that the New York Times and major newspapers across the country have been engaging in political activism, not journalism for all these years, and they've really thinly veiled it. And this hasn't just been true for the last few years. This has been true for literally decades, going all the way back to Walter Cronkite, who is a committed leftist, going all the way back to Edward R. Murrow, who is a committed member of the political left. I'm going all the way back to the Vietnam War when Cronkite was going on TV, suggesting that the Vietnam War was lost after the Tet Offensive, which it absolutely was not. And the fact is, the media in the United States have been monolithically left since the 1960s, and it's gotten worse and more activist and more open, and the American people are on to the game. Well, that has resulted in a lack of

trust. Now, that does not mean that all of these institutions are losing money. There were some

institutional shifts that happened in the mainstream media over the last 10 years that meant

that a lot of the newspapers around the country saw significant losses. That includes places

like the LA Times, particularly regional papers, saw significant losses

because the only people who were subscribing were people who expected a physical copy of their

newspaper on their doorstep the next morning. Well, if it turns out that nobody wants that

physical copy of the Pope's newspaper on their doorstep the next morning and then get all their

news for free online, then why exactly would you subscribe to the Los Angeles Times? Los Los Angeles Times has been bleeding for years. But the New York Times has found a way to make that up. That's because they're a national newspaper with a wire service and because they have extraordinary brand credibility, despite the fact that the trust levels in the media generally are down. And so they have a lot of subscribers. The Wall Street Journal was the first to jump into the space. They have a lot of subscribers. So in other words, big national newspapers are doing fine. Local regional papers, those are the ones that are getting hit the hardest. Now, the reason that all of this becomes important is because the media seem to be at wit's end about what to do about the fact that they're sort of bleeding out in

terms of both credibility nationally and in terms of money regionally. And that is the twin narrative

for today. Because on the one hand, you've got the national newspapers who are complaining

that they are now being targeted as political activists. And you've got the regional newspapers

complaining that they're being put out of business because there just isn't the money to run them. The journalistic industry is in a severe crisis.

It's a crisis that really could only be cured by a systemic shift in how the news is funded,

on the one hand, and by a change in orientation on the other, moving away from activism,

and toward objective journalism if you hope to maintain brand credibility at places like

the New York Times. Now, the reason this comes up is because yesterday we saw the most bizarre,

strange response by the New York Times to a story that I've seen in a very long time. Here's what

happened. There's a fellow named Arthur Schwartz. Arthur Schwartz is good friends with Donald Trump

Jr. He is close with the Trump administration.

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