Media Bias in the Age of Trump, by Daniel J. Flynn

By Daniel J. Flynn, Chronicles, May 2026

Daniel J. Flynn, the author of The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer (Encounter/ISI Books), serves as a Hoover Institution visiting fellow and American Spectator senior editor.

Public trust in the news plummeted as journalists became political activists. Big Tech is trying to save the media by controlling what we see, whether we trust it or not.

A Laffer Curve exists for everything, and the Age of Trump’s overlap with the most brazenly biased media illustrates this truth.

How else to explain the coexistence of two forces pulling so hard in opposing directions? The more that activist journalists try, the less they influence public opinion. The less they influence public opinion, the more they try. Instead of demonizing Trump in the mind of the citizenry, they more successfully immunize the mind of the citizenry from their demonization attempts.

The phenomenon resembles the effect on revenue of the high-income-tax rates that Art Laffer once questioned. The theory goes that a 90 percent rate, because it leaves little incentive to work, might yield lower revenue than a 30 percent rate. Similarly, a reporter going full activist, in the style of former CNN reporter Jim Acosta, advances his ends a shorter distance than did the more subtle Walter Cronkite. Sometimes less is more. ….