During a recent interview with CNN correspondent Elle Reeve, comedian and podcaster Tim Dillon provided a self-effacing but thoughtful critique of the mainstream media.
Unlike Jon Stewart, who famously went on Crossfire in 2004 to call the kettle black, Dillon’s diagnosis of the media’s decline was devoid of arrogant, self-righteous theatrics. Instead, Dillon approached Reeve’s questions with a humility that belied her contention that a network of online podcasters had cost Kamala Harris the presidency.
REEVE: “Do you feel like you’re part of a new establishment that’s being created?”
DILLON: “I don’t think I’m part of a new establishment…To hang [Kamala Harris’] defeat all on a few podcasts and to say that they were the problem, I just don’t buy the narrative, so I don’t think I’m the new establishment. If you weigh, again, a few comedians with podcasts versus all the people that supported Kamala Harris, you know, Democrat donors, billionaires, big people, if the idea is that me and a few comedians have more power than multibillionaires, huge media institutions, a whole political party apparatus, I just don’t think most people are going to buy that. I think it’s a great way to excuse running an unpopular candidate on a platform that American people weren’t sold on.”
In some respects, Dillon sells himself short. He is part of a new media ecosystem that has flourished online, reaping millions of followers and leaving traditional media institutions in the dust. That new media ecosystem also includes figures like Joe Rogan, Theo Von, and Dave Smith, all of whom have built robust careers undercutting establishment narratives both through their irreverent commentary on current events and their willingness to interview controversial or heterodox figures.
At the same time, none of these individuals are wedded to politics. They’re comedians who’ve become media figures precisely because they challenge the mainstream. Unlike Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert, who serve as jesters in the royal court that is the Democratic Party, Dillon and his peers do not use their status as comedians to justify a subservience to liberal power centers. They don’t claim to be experts, but they’re fully aware of the fact that they use their comedy to advance a political message. Their audiences appreciate their candor, which stands in sharp contrast to the self-importance of the corporate press. The latter spent years shielding Joe Biden from criticism and months insisting that his vice president was the sole figure equipped to stem the tide of American fascism. The results last November speak for themselves.
Of course, Dillon and his colleagues get things wrong sometimes. And there’s ample reason to be just as skeptical of the alternative media as there is to be suspicious of the mainstream media. As the journalist Michael Tracey has pointed out, many alternative media personalities owe their careers to the fact that they glorify Donald Trump, defending his every decision and insisting that every action he takes as president is part of some Manichaean struggle to uproot the deep state.
Corporate media and “alternative” media both completely botched the story of the GOP and Trump aggressively supporting Ukraine war funding, even though it was staring them in the face the whole time. Too wedded to fake wish-casting narratives over actual facts and evidence. Dopes
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) April 16, 2024
The radicals (and, in many cases, “radicals”) of today have a strange habit of staffing the establishments of tomorrow. Trump’s second term has, without question, illuminated the fact that alternative media figures are just as prone to corruption as their counterparts in the mainstream. Look no further than Dan Bongino, the former talk radio host who currently serves as deputy director of the FBI. The host of The Dan Bongino Show has a long history of questioning the circumstances surrounding Jeffrey Epstein’s death. Just weeks before Trump named him deputy director, Bongino said that he would never “let [that] story go.” Now, he’s insisting that Epstein committed suicide.
At a time when the Trump White House is corralling “independent journalists, podcasters, social media influencers, and content creators” into its press pool, Tim Dillon’s critique of the mainstream media is more important than ever. Kamala Harris lost the 2024 presidential election precisely because her campaign relied upon a network of media personalities who lost the trust of the American public years ago.
At the same time, the alternative media figures who’ve exposed the illegitimacy of the corporate press have an obligation to avoid repeating the mistakes of their scorned antecedents. They should treat their viewers and listeners with the respect their establishment counterparts denied their audiences. Rather than profiting off of Donald Trump’s presidency, they should criticize his administration whenever it runs afoul of the principles they claim to adhere to. Otherwise, the new media ecosystem they’ve inaugurated will become indistinguishable from the one it was intended to supplant.
