The case against the media by the media
NY Magazine has done an in depth feature on why media is failing.
Their analysis is:
- News is an entertainment business, even if it pretends otherwise
- So it doesn’t know how to handle serious issues
- Gets addicted to conflict
- Loves simple heroes
- And simple villains
- Reduces complexity to comfortable narratives
- And is desperate to be respected, which produces blindness
- Journalists are easily bored
- Especially by good news
- Unfortunately, so are readers, who are hard-wired for panic
- Which editors, producers, and publishers know
- Journalists are deluded
- More cynical than their readers
- Rush their work
- Believe popular opinion is all that matters
- And are completely comfortable cutting deals
- And it’s not just in politics
- Often journalists think they know the story before they report it
- And are no longer protected from market forces
- The media is also clueless about its audience (and country)
- Which brings us to Donald Trump
- His campaign was catnip to the partisan outrage machine
- And everybody was transfixed by the spectacle
- And obsessed with the incredible horse race
- Including the public
- But gorging on Trump coverage didn’t actually mean coming to terms with him
- Later, the journalists who tried harder to call out Trump (by fact-checking him, for instance) weren’t very effective
- Not that that is really anything new
- Whoever the subject, the press can be cruel
- And selective in its cruelty
- And things can get very personal
- Reporters are obsessed with gaffes
- Can be horrible to women, even when they are trying to be kind
- They can also be lascivious, when they aren’t being outright lewd
- And ruthless in their pursuit of “the get.”
- Then, typically, they just move on
- And then there’s the problem of “objectivity.”
- And “bias,” of course
- Plus general media ignorance
- And the way media is consumed helps all-out charlatans flourish, too
- (Not that these complaints are unprecedented.)
- The media’s lost power, and coziness with its subjects, serves the celebrity industrial complex …
- … Political operations …
- … Big business …
- … And start-ups too
- Who owns things is a major problem, too, whether it’s a giant corporation …
- Or an unsavory individual
- Social media rules everything now
- And it does enclose everybody in customized-news silos
- (Even though, often, those silos are at war with one another.)
- And yet it has also reinvigorated things
- Particularly by diversifying things
- But also by giving people what they want
A very long but interesting read.