’60 Minutes’ Reporter Lesley Stahl Admitted He Felt ‘Very Down’ About the Future of the Free Press Newly elected President Donald Trump takes office again.
Stahl participated in an event at the 92NY Center for Culture & Arts in November with columnist Peggy Noonan, where the topic was a reflection on the 2024 presidential election. During their conversation, they lamented declining confidence in and attention to the mainstream media.
“The press is fraying,” Stahl said.
“60 Minutes” reporter Lesley Stahl discussed the state of the media following Trump’s re-election. (AP Photos)
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“Yes, totally,” Noonan replied, although she claimed this had been a common attitude over the past two decades. “Nothing will stop you from being the free press.”
“You really are a sunny person, aren’t you?” Stahl noted. “I’m very concerned about the press, extremely concerned about the press.”
Stahl pointed out that traditional media still has low trust “down there with the lawyers,” largely because people like Trump and Elon Musk insist that “legacy media is dead.”
Stahl suggested that Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump’s pushback on traditional media could be a factor. (Brandon Bell)
Stahl added, “But it’s kind of bouncing right now. And I don’t know how it recovers. I’m very sad about it.’
Noonan added other issues contributing to traditional media’s struggles, such as the rise of technology, and was pessimistic about the future.
“We’re talking about something that’s so essential that you don’t want to say, ‘Well, we’ll see.’ Or perhaps: ‘The world will end, we will see.’ But if America were to lose freedom of the press and freedom of speech, that would be the beginning of losing everything,” she said.
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In October, found a Gallup poll that Americans had historically low views of the press for the third year in a row, with only 31% expressing a “great” or “fair amount” of trust in the media to report the news fairly and accurately.
The media has consistently measured low levels of trust. (CBS 60 minutes)
The same poll found that 36% of Americans did not trust the media, while another 33% had “not very much” trust in the press.
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