After last week’s post came still more about the continuing train wreck that is The New York Times and what’s triggering a new generation of journalists to turn on the traditions of their profession.
What’s evolving is the “rage economy,” as explained by Murtaza Hussain at The Intercept:
“Just as the advertising model incentivized news outlets to project a business-friendly view of the world, the new model requires readers to stay not just satisfied but also engaged enough that they are willing to maintain economic support. Unfortunately for society as a whole, one of the best ways to monetize engagement on the internet is by generating anger and hatred, usually directed at some other group of people. This rage-driven model is at the heart of what Mir calls postjournalism. In its most extreme forms, in venues where the old professional ethics and standards of journalism have been discarded or never took root, postjournalism will produce mobs whose rage is incomprehensible to those outside their bubbles, like the QAnon conspiracy theorists who sacked the Capitol.”
Adding some important context to all this is a 2019 piece in Wired by Antonio Garcia Martinez, that journalism is reverting to its pre-legacy roots:
“Journalists pining for a return to their golden age of advertising-supported journalism are disturbingly similar to aged Midwestern factory workers seeking a return to the time when high-school-educated labor could afford middle-class lives with total job security. Both golden ages resulted from a unique set of economic and political circumstances that are now gone and impossible to reproduce. Those who claim democracy requires the precise flavor of journalism we’ve known for a century or so will have to explain how our republic survived the century preceding.”
But don’t worry:
“Neither democracy nor journalism will die. In fact, I suspect we’re about to have way more of both than we’ve had in a while. The path to the next golden age in American journalism isn’t nostalgia for a vanishing past but the same way that led to the previous golden age, namely, that of profit. More than likely, given the new business models, this will mean some partiality from journalism as well. That’s just fine too. It’s what Ben Franklin would have done.”
But only if the new generation of journalists ditches its hostility to free speech. Ex-Timesman John Tierney at City Journal last month, as the latest Times convulsions were taking place:
“When I wrote in 2019 about journalists’ new antipathy to free speech, it seemed bad enough that they were targeting rivals in their own profession with advertising boycotts and smear campaigns that led to conservative journalists being fired and banished from social media. But since the Capitol riot, they’ve gone beyond ‘de-platforming’ individual heretics. Now they want to eliminate the platforms, too.”
It’s not just the youngs who feel this way. The Overlords of the Old Order are working to ensure the privilege of the legacy set. Richard Stengel, a former editor of Time magazine who served in the Obama Administration’s State Department and was recently appointed by the Biden Administration to serve in a global media role, advocates for a “hate speech” law, a direct assault on the First Amendment:
“On the internet, truth is not optimized. On the web, it’s not enough to battle falsehood with truth; the truth doesn’t always win. In the age of social media, the marketplace model doesn’t work. A 2016 Stanford study showed that 82 percent of middle schoolers couldn’t distinguish between an ad labeled ‘sponsored content’ and an actual news story. Only a quarter of high school students could tell the difference between an actual verified news site and one from a deceptive account designed to look like a real one.
“Since World War II, many nations have passed laws to curb the incitement of racial and religious hatred. These laws started out as protections against the kinds of anti-Semitic bigotry that gave rise to the Holocaust. We call them hate speech laws, but there’s no agreed-upon definition of what hate speech actually is. In general, hate speech is speech that attacks and insults people on the basis of race, religion, ethnic origin and sexual orientation.”
Be very afraid: These are people with overwhelming power in media and government fields, who have the ears of those with utmost power.
The solution to the problem Stengel sees is better media literacy for the age we’re living in, and not the fear-mongering of a class of journalists and politicians desperately trying to hold on to their ability to control messages and dispense to the public only pre-approved information.
The analog world is being swept away, and imposing measures that go against the essence of American society—curbing speech—cannot prevent that.
These are momentous times for the future of American journalism and free speech, and they’re bound up together, in precarious shape.
Stay tuned.
Rights Of Mind 