By Michael Quinn Sullivan | Texas Scorecard
We often hear people refer to the collection of leftist newspapers and television networks that once held sway over the dissemination of facts and opinions as the “mainstream media.”
In fact, there is nothing “mainstream” about them.
By definition, the dying legacy outlets are NOT mainstream. The clearest evidence for this is found in their declining sales, diminishing market penetration, and nonexistent economic viability. If the newspapers and networks that get so casually labeled “mainstream” actually were, they wouldn’t be laying off staff as their circulations and viewerships plummet.
Texas newspapers, for example, have fewer readers today than ever before, despite the massive surge in the state’s population. Sure, they will snivel about “online” readership, but the paywalls they established haven’t made any of them profitable.
Newspapers in Texas and around the nation are dying precisely because they are not in the mainstream. You might be able to say they were once mainstream, but they are not anymore. The legacy media does not sit in the “mainstream” of political or cultural thought but rather on the far-left bank.
For us to label them “mainstream” is to legitimize the illegitimate.