Axios CEO reveals how mainstream media destroyed public trust in three phases
Axios co-founder and CEO Jim VandeHei called out the legacy media Tuesday for shattering the public's trust over the last decade.
Speaking with The Free Press’s Bari Weiss on her "Honestly" podcast, along with his co-founder Mike Allen, VandeHei outlined how he felt mainstream outlets lost the American people’s trust in three phases, through the rise of Twitter, coverage of the coronavirus pandemic and "Defund the Police" movement, and President Biden’s mental decline.
"What happened with Twitter is - people forget now [since] it’s a lot of conservative voices, a lot of independent voices - it was a hotbed of liberal groupthink for a long time," VandeHei said. "And it was the first time since I’ve been in this business that I would get on a feed and I would see reporters who I had trusted, who I admired, making it crystal clear what side they were on. You could tell in what they were tweeting, and you could tell in who they were following and who was following them."
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He continued, "Then came along, kind of, the COVID, Defund the Police, word policing, where I think a lot of Americans were looking around going ‘that doesn’t sit right with me.’ And the way it’s being covered didn’t sit right with them."
VandeHei called the media’s failure to properly cover Biden’s mental state the final straw for many.
"People were saying, ‘I can see with my own two eyes that the guy seems pretty old, probably doesn’t seem capable of being the president in the next term and yet there’s not a whole hell of a lot of coverage of it,’" VandeHei said.
However, VandeHei stopped short of condemning journalism entirely, mentioning Axios reporter Alex Thompson for his ongoing coverage of concerns over Biden’s age despite the narrative at the time. He also suggested it’s only "a couple of bad apples" ruining the mainstream media’s image.
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"It breaks my heart," VandeHei said. "I hate that. I love journalism. I am a fierce defender of journalism. I believe that most reporters at most institutions actually do try to get to the closest approximation of the truth and achieve it most of the time. I think it’s a couple of bad apples who make it look bad for everyone."
In an interview with Mediaite in February, VandeHei said that liberal media "has probably never been weaker in my lifetime than right now."