CNN asked a former evangelical what it would take for Evangelicals to abandon Trump and he replied: “People are often looking for some revelation that’s going to get people to stop supporting him but I think we’re beyond that in most cases.”

What CNN and other corporate media companies are failing to do is to take responsibility for their own actions. It was media companies that created Trump. They put him on the cover on their magazines. They wrote headline front-page stories about his so-called wealth without ever doing the footwork necessary to verify his boastful claims. Just as they are doing now with Mike Johnson, repeating his claims that the reason he has no bank accounts to report is because “I’m a man of modest means” when, in fact, his earnings place him in a top tier category of wage earners. Where is the documentation to back up Johnson’s statement that he’s a man of modest means?

If CNN or any other media company really wanted to know what it would take for Evangelicals to abandon Trump, they only have to look in the mirror.

You.

You are what it takes. Just ask Britney Spears how media can destroy a life. Or ask anyone of the Kardashians how media elevates a person in the eye of the public. Ask Jerry Falwell Jr. how media can create an icon in the Evangelical community and then cause that same person to be abandoned by that same community. For that matter, ask Jimmy Carter. I bet he remembers how the media mistreated him during his presidency and now elevates him to sainthood.

If Princess Diana wasn’t dead we could ask her what media’s role was in the destruction of her life. Oh, I know, let’s ask Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex. I bet she has some thoughts on media’s role in building her up and tearing her down.

Today, Taylor Swift is a media darling. In the near future that same media will be talking about how she’s let herself go, how her voice is faltering, how her body has changed.

Let’s ask Jane Fonda about how media once vilified her and now considers her a queen.

I say all this as a woman who has worked in newsrooms around this country. Newsrooms primarily dominated by white men and owned by richer white men.

But don’t take my word for it. Reuters reports that only 22% of the 180 top editors across the 240 brands covered are women, despite the fact that 40% of journalists are women. In 2022, this figure was 21% across the same markets.

And according to the FCC, women own just 5.3% of the nation’s 1,368 full-power commercial TV stations, a 7.3% decrease from 2015. People of color owned 1.9 % of the nation’s 1,368 full-powered commercial TV stations, down from 2.6% in 2015.

In essence today’s media corporations look very much like the photo of the white people surrounding Mike Johnson when he was sworn in as Speaker – a bunch of white men littered with a handful of token women.

So keep all that in mind when reading reports on Trump and the polls.

Media makes the person in this country.

Media can just as easily make that person disappear from the headlines and news shows.

But they aren’t about to do that when that person is a cash cow for them.