As we get further removed from the tragic Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, a narrative different from the media’s repetitive refrain may arise.

Former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly explained in a recent interview with the BBC.

For more than two weeks the point from the media and the Democrats was that the riot was incited by President Donald Trump and committed by “white nationalists” who, like Nazis of old, were simply following orders. That is now the subject of Trump’s upcoming impeachment trial.

This was evident on Sunday, when Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren told CNN: “We’re talking about a president who stood in front of a mob and told them to go to the Capitol and invade, told them to go to the Capitol and stop the lawful business of government so that he could try to stay in the White House.”

Yet, Kelly pitched a different idea.

“They hated him so much, they checked their objectivity, and it wasn’t just CNN, all of them did. They just couldn’t check their own personal feelings about him,” Kelly said in an interview with BBC Newsnight Saturday, according to Daily Mail.

“Either that or they signed on to the Jorge Ramos theory of covering Trump,” she added of the anti-Trump Univision host. “He advocated prior to Trump’s election that we needed to cover him differently, that you needed to outwardly call him a racist, a sexist, a misogynist, all of it, and that that was important for history. And I think too many journalists agreed with that at their own peril.”

“Part of the reason we saw what happened at the Capitol here two weeks ago is because there had been a complete lack of trust in the media, and people don’t know where to turn for true information, they don’t trust the media anymore. And it’s a major problem,” Kelly added.

Kelly recalled that Trump’s routine “disparaging comments” about CNN as he emerged as a viable presidential candidate, and thought, “I was like this is unfair. CNN may be a little boring, but it’s fair and it’s factual. It’s not biased against Trump.”

But, she added, “Then they spent the next four years proving him right – proving me wrong.”

While Kelly was ripped on social media for not parroting the narrative of the past couple of weeks, her comments coincided with an Axios report showing trust in the mainstream media has hit an all-time low.

“For the first time ever, fewer than half of all Americans have trust in traditional media,” Axios noted.

The survey, compiled by Edelman Trust Barometer, revealed that 56 percent of Americans supported the statement, “Journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations,” and that 58 percent believe “most news organizations are more concerned with supporting an ideology or political position than with informing the public.”

Edelman also found that while 57 percent of Democrats trust the media, just 18 percent of Republicans do.

“This is the era of information bankruptcy,” Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman, said in a statement, according to the Daily Mail. “We’ve been lied to by those in charge, and media sources are seen as politicized and bias[ed]. The result is a lack of quality information and increased divisiveness.”

But, the Daily Mail noted, the U.S. response was “close to the average across 27 countries included in the Edelman survey, indicating that fading trust in the media is not an American phenomenon.”

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W.E. Thompson Jr.

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