Is Conservative Media Losing Influence?

If you’ll forgive the expression (as in no pun intended) it’s not news that a lot of news outlets have been under financial pressure and for some years now. Print news, both newspapers and even more so magazines have taken a beating. Even their digital/online versions. However with perhaps the exception of during COVID, TV news has had its own difficulties. We see announcements about staff cutbacks it seems on an increasing basis. Whether the cutbacks lead to declining quality of reporting drives additional problems that lead to more cutbacks is a lengthy topic so for now let’s concentrate on the data that’s showing the news business has a problem. More to the point the problem is more pronounced in conservative media.

I read an intriguing story by The Atlantic this morning about this. It got my attention, both for what it said in detail as well as an entire area it didn’t mention. (I’ll get to that) The main thrust of the article is that for all the overall difficulties in the news business the problem is more pronounced with conservative outlets:

This past February, readership of the 10 largest conservative websites was down 40 percent compared with the same month in 2020, according to The Righting, a newsletter that uses monthly data from Comscore—essentially the Nielsen ratings of the internet—to track right-wing media. (February is the most recent month with available Comscore data.) Some of the bigger names in the field have been pummeled the hardest: The Daily Caller lost 57 percent of its audience; Drudge Report, the granddaddy of conservative aggregation, was down 81 percent; and The Federalist, founded just over a decade ago, lost a staggering 91 percent. (The site’s CEO and co-founder, Sean Davis, called that figure “laughably inaccurate” in an email but offered no further explanation.) FoxNews.com, by far the most popular conservative-news site, has fared better, losing “only” 22 percent of traffic, which translates to 23 million fewer monthly site visitors compared with four years ago.

Ok, that’s a lot to take in. (sorry about that) The Atlantic goes on to say how some of this was inevitable when you consider the impact of COVID (for various reasons) on news consumption.  However they also say there’s no ready explanation for why the dropoff is particularly noticeable on the conservative side.  Yes The Atlantic says Facebook seems a likely culprit. They describe how 2016 played out, and changes (not soon enough or enough in general as far as I’m concerned) that have been made since. And I for one don’t doubt that thanks to Russian influence FB saw a big uptick in conservative users/activity due to Trump’s 2016 campaign. Suddenly it seemed, and for a couple of years there conservatives who once hated on FB were proponents of the platform.

Of course, even modest changes to algorithms that began to emphasize stuff from family and friends, and some fact-checking have gotten conservatives back into their normal “everyone’s out to censor conservatives” whining.  Still, the linked article makes the point that many sites including news sites get traffic from platforms like FB and it’s derivatives, and although not mentioned Twitter as well. Hell, PZ and similar sites get traffic generated by people seeing us/them mentioned on other sites, just as they get traffic from us citing them. That kind of sharing benefits everyone.  So why are some outlets seemingly taking a harder hit? Again from the linked article:

A simpler explanation is that conservative digital media are disproportionately dependent on social-media referrals in the first place. Many mainstream publications have long-established brand names, large newsrooms to churn out copy, and, in a few cases, large numbers of loyal subscribers. Sites like Breitbart and Ben Shapiro’s The Daily Wire, however, were essentially Facebook-virality machines, adept at injecting irresistibly outrageous, clickable nuggets into people’s feeds. So the drying-up of referrals hit these publications much harder.

The article notes a couple of bigger losers of traffic such as The Washington Free Beacon (down 58%) and Gateway Pundit (down 62%) yet also points out that while everyone is down from 2020 levels some outlets have adapted and at least stopped the bleeding. For example from Feb. 2023 to Feb. 2024 the WaPo and NYT were essentially flat, and Slate was actually up 14%. So again, mainstream (or “both sider”) outlets are according to objective data navigating the post COVID and FB changes better than others.

The Atlantic doesn’t dig into what’s gone on at Twitter/X which has because of Musk’s buying it turned into a different animal. Personally I think if it was still under the former management the same (again, modest) changes made to FB and it’s derivatives would also have been made there and conservatives would really be howling these days! Musk is proving a “mainstream” outlet for conservative hate with a bare minimum of “restraint” and I wish The Atlantic article had explored that.

Still, their overall take is that while FB (and Twitter) is still the big kid on the block things are much more diffused than they used to be. We’ve enjoyed poking fun at Trump’s Truth Social which was supposed to be even more “bigly” than Twitter and FB but only had what, two or three million registered users? Still, it’s been there and so have lots of other sites you never heard of. That’s why when the Atlantic concludes that conservative outlets don’t seem to have the same influence they once did I’m not so sure.

I look at polling that shows Trump where he is I think there’s more going on, something The Atlantic might not have taken into account. Think about this: Trump has NOT been out there at anywhere near the rates he was in 2016 and 2020.  Also consider the fact even Fox and Newsmax don’t carry what rallies he does have live and in their entirety and haven’t for years now. Even though his FB and Twitter/X bans were lifted he’s not been doing anything (himself) there either. Not even Twitter as he’s sticking to his own Truth Social. Ok, so others are reposting some of what he says there to twitter but it’s not the prolific output he put there himself back before being banned.

However, the MAGA goobers are as intense and motivated as ever. To me that suggest they are in fact getting their Trump news from somewhere, even if from a bunch of smaller and pretty much unknown places/sites.  Otherwise I’m convinced much of the fervor would have died down by now.  So yes, I think that there are more than enough small, conservative sites/blogs spread around the country that do on a more grassroots level what used to be done on the big, well-known platforms.

Then there’s the matter I said early in this piece I’d get to. Something The Atlantic didn’t mention at all. It’s been out there all along, and has been for decades. When you look at the maps of red states and blue states, and especially when you see an overlay of population density it’s obvious. You’ve probably guessed what I’m talking about.

Talk Radio! Yep, those big chunks of rural/small town America where am radio dominates, and which became a province of two genres, “Christian” themes and music, and TALK radio which has since Reagan abolished the Fairness Doctrine been almost exclusively right-wing. Hard-core right wing. It was bad enough for decades and the the whole Qanon thing came along and RWNJ mated with batshit crazy and produced the toxic creature from hell.

I’m not entirely discounting The Atlantic’s premise with their article. They are probably on to something important. And the impact, or rather lessening impact of the main conservative outlets in metro areas matters. But for reasons I’ve outlined it might not matter as much as we’d like. And Talk Radio is spewing forth it’s mixture of distortions and outright lies every minute of every day. That’s why polling shows (so far) Trump still has a chance. Whether polling saying a conviction (even the “least serious” case in Manhattan) will hurt him remains to be seen. And it will take a few weeks, perhaps more for the full impact of Trump’s stumbling through attempts to straddle the abortion mess he’s created will sort out.

Given Trump’s not gotten the expected share of the vote in GOP primaries that one would expect perhaps The Atlantic is on to something. For now I’m taking their assessment that RWNJ news is in trouble with a grain of salt. Maybe it’s true of the better known outlets but overall? We will have to wait and see.