The House Democrats and the media built up the Mueller hearings for weeks as the long awaited moment in the Trump investigations. It appears that the moment came far too late for most Americans. Less than 13 million viewers tuned in for the hearings, which was widely described as a disaster for the Democrats and, frankly, Mueller. In another example of the growth of cable over broadcast, Fox News secured the largest audience for the day — an ironic conclusion given the false report that Fox would not cover the hearing live. Yet, the numbers were down overall from the hearing of former FBI Director James Comey. The hearing undermined the Democratic position with a remarkably ill-conceived plan of having members just read portions of the report to Mueller who came across as befuddled and confused.

Yesterday, I covered the Mueller hearing with CBS and BBC as painful as that duty proved to be. It was an utter meltdown. Some of us had heard months ago that Robert Mueller had “lost a step” and was not viewed as in control of the final report. The Democrats were aware of that but, in what may be the single greatest political blunder in decades, put Mueller in front of cameras for six hours. He proceeded to stumble through his testimony despite being allowed to repeatedly refuse to answer questions that were neither privileged nor classified. While many of use noted the many contradictions and befuddled performance, media stalwarts for the Democrats nevertheless declared the hearing a success. MCNBC’s Rachel Maddow called it a “remarkable day” in which Mueller gave his ‘blunt” review of Trump. Others declared that it was a “victory” for Democrats and succeeded in creating a groundswell for impeachment. This is the problem with the state of media today. Channels and commentators are now part of formula coverage that requires them to advance the expected position regardless of the actual news. It is advocacy journalism and yesterday is an example of how detached it has become from real journalism.