(TheLibertyRevolution.com)- The mainstream media must be secretly hating that President Donald Trump is no longer in the White House.
Even though they constantly railed against him and his supporters, the fact is that Trump brought mainstream media ratings and web traffic. Now that he is out of office, mainstream media is at a loss for what to write about — and it’s reflecting in the amount of traffic they’re getting to their websites.
SimilarWeb, an analytics firm, recently studied the web traffic of mainstream media. The firm found a decline of at least 20% in traffic in February compared to January. Consumption of political news altogether dropped by 28%, as people simply lost interest in presidential politics once Democrat Joe Biden was inaugurated.
An Axios report on the situation read:
“There were three times as many stories written about Trump in February of 2017 than about Biden last month, according to data from NewsWhip.
“Biden was discussed on cable news for an estimated 1,836 minutes last month, according to the Stanford Cable TV News Analyzer. In February of Trump’s first year, he commanded an estimated 4,669 minutes of cable news.”
Thus far, Biden hasn’t given a press conference of any significance yet, though he seems about to as he’s going to sign his $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package.
It seems the media has simply decided to take a break from covering presidential politics as much as they did under Trump. Part of that, of course, may have to do with the fact that Trump was always attacking mainstream media. Whatever the reason, it’s certainly hurting their bottom line.
But as Didi Rankovic wrote, this isn’t a good thing for the public. She wrote:
“Unlike Trump, whose every move was in the limelight and scrutinized, Biden seems set to carry out whatever policies his administration has in mind with the public, for better or worse, not paying much attention.
“What some mainstream media take away from [the decline in web traffic] is that people are now used to the ‘drama’ from politics that was present during the Trump presidency. However, much of that drama, producing polarization and divisions, may have actually come from the media themselves, rather than politics per se; after all, the current sharp dip in traffic shows they had incentive to keep whipping up that drama for financial reasons, beyond any preferred politics and ideologies.”
Rankovic did point out the fact that it’s just mainstream media that’s seeing a huge dip in web traffic. As she wrote:
“Not all outlets are seeing a decline in interest in political news: conservative ones have seen a huge surge, with Newsmax 179% up last month compared to daily average during the past three years: SimilarWeb said One America News Network (OANN) and Gateway Pundit gained 157% and 70%.
“And when Trump addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) earlier this month, 7 million people tuned in to watch.”
So, it’s not interest in politics that has waned. It’s interest in politics as told by mainstream media.
