“60 Minutes” reporter Leslie Stahl admitted she feels “very bleak” about the future of press freedom given President-elect Donald Trump's return to office.
In November, Stahl attended an event with columnist Peggy Noonan at the 92NY Cultural Arts Center, where the topic was reflections on the 2024 presidential election. In the conversation, they lamented the decline in trust and attention in mainstream media.
“The press is exhausted,” Stahl said.
“60 Minutes” reporter Leslie Stahl spoke about the current state of the media after Trump's reelection. (AP)
FOX News Channel makes history as MSNBC and CNN continue to collapse since Election Day
“Yes, absolutely,” Noonan replied, but insisted this had been a common attitude for the past 20 years. “There's nothing stopping you from being a free press.”
“You're a really sunny person, aren't you?” Stahl said. “I'm very concerned about the press and I'm very concerned about the press.”
Stahl said legacy media maintains record-low trust levels “with lawyers,” largely because people like Trump and Elon Musk claim “legacy media is dead.” He pointed out that he continues to do so.
Stahl suggested Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump's backlash against legacy media may be a factor. (Brandon Bell)
Stahl added: “But right now we're kind of stuck. And we don't know how we're going to recover. We're feeling very dark about this.”
Noonan was pessimistic about the future, adding other issues contributing to legacy media's struggles, such as advances in technology.
“We're talking about something so important that you don't want to say, 'Well, let's see.' Or maybe, 'The world is going to end, we'll see.' . But if America loses freedom of the press and freedom of speech, that will be the beginning of losing everything,” she said.
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A Gallup poll in October found that for the third year in a row, Americans have historically low views of the press, expressing either “a lot” or “a lot” of trust in the media to report the news fairly. It was found that only 31% of respondents were Exactly.
The media has consistently polled record low levels of trust. (CBS 60 minutes)
The same poll found that 36% of Americans don't trust the media, and an additional 33% trust the media “not very much.”
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