Not that long ago, the press could root out corruption, topple presidents, and end wars. Now, even the biggest scoops have little impact. Here's how and why the media lost its mojo.
Thanks for all your excellent reporting it all deserves way more coverage. It would help if the majority of people were able to employ critical thinking skills instead of being manipulated by emotions. Recently debated with someone who's sure RFK Jr. is right demonizing Dr. Fauci with facts that don't add up yet this person insists Dr. Fauci is as evil as the Nazi Mengele cause RFK Jr. and others like him say it's so, sad.
So discouraging especially after correspondents dinner. Your excellent journalism keeps us hopeful that things will change. Maybe contact The Left Hook’s Wajahat Ali who interviews lots of people every day on Substack and amplifies their work. Your name and work should be out there more. Gobsmacked by your books. 📚
The fracture in the media wasn’t uniform because the GOP had a long term strategy... .
Yes, for most of the television era 3 networks controlled the picture. Nobody had to manage a message when scarcity produced one. The Fairness Doctrine fell in 1987. Talk radio filled the gap within a year. Fox arrived in 1996 with a camera. Cable followed, then the internet, then social feeds, then algorithms…
Liberal & centrist audiences spread across outlets that argue with each other daily and share almost nothing.
The other half did not fragment. Republicans name a single outlet as their primary news source. Talk radio repeats the same. Sinclair segments run inside local newscasts that audiences still trust as neighborhood television. Tens of millions of Americans get one twisted account of events…
A fragmented public is hard to move because it has too many competing signals. A consolidated public is easy to move because it has one.
Reality is you’re all being moved… think for yourself…
I have been screaming about the danger since 2015. People just called me a conspiracy freak. Now I saw “stupidity” will be the demise of the USA. Thanks for your expertise, Craig.
What do you suppose Trump & Putin discuss in their frequent 1 hr.+ phone conversations? I bet they're not talking about ways to strengthen democracy.
With Putin's tutelidge and Trump's lack of any kind of moral compass, and the financial backing treasonous billionaires, they have learned to defeat the integrity & effectiveness of America's critically important 4th estate.
I suppose they discuss the ramifications of an allegiance common to both men - one decidedly unknown to the electorates that allegedly chose them - and one distinctly left out of the conversation here. Both men, either by means of conversion or (in the case of Pootie)by maternal birthright are hobbled by dutiful obligation to a foreign entity, one with goals inimical to the wellbeing of the citizens of their respective countries.
Neither man fully acknowledges nor denies this silent allegiance to the tiny terror state in the muddled east... nor does the so-called '4th estate' dare bring any attention to it whatsoever. So the farce continues - here and every where else - let's look under the rug, for the elephant in the room!
In any honest discussion as to the demise of the west and what led to it, this is the paramount dynamic to begin with. The subversion of USA's sovereignty and power was never a solely "Russian" operation. Once one understands the nature of the entity which took control of post-soviet Rus and then 'exported' it's thuggish army of phony 'religious refugees' to the west, it's impossible to avoid connecting the rest of the dots which lead to the obvious conclusion so studiously avoided here.
The same one so disastrously on display in the current moment, as the money and power bleed from the once mighty Republic in order to fulfill the mad fantasies of ethno-religious supremacists half way across the world.
I read all your books including Boss Rove. You, Sarah Kendzior and Aaron Good are all doing your best, and it truly puzzles me why all three of you don't get interviewed or amplified. Wait a minute, no it doesn't.
Unger's assessment is fair and reasonable but excludes an important factor-- the technology-driven change in the way we receive information. In the old days, roughly up to the turn of the millennium, there were limited channels of information-- a television channel and the associated network, a morning newspaper, a radio station. These limited channels captured almost all the advertising revenues. Digitization, as articulated by Nicholas Negroponte from the MIT Media Lab, drove money, power, and choice from those owning or controlling a channel and moved it to content providers. Once, your morning paper, your TV, your newspaper, your magazines, and your neighbors and co-workers providing almost all information about things you could not see or hear. Now, everyone with a keyboard can provide you with information. No one is controlling the channel for plausibility or verification. Unger points out the impact of the giant scandals exposed in the media. Major newspapers, TV and radio programs read or watched or listened to the stories in other outlets provided and the professional skeptics who ran those outlets decided if there was something there and then tried to match the stories. Think about this: Could the Watergate reporting have ignited a firestorm if there were a thousand other voices saying this was just "lamestream media" propagating "fake news"? Nixon and his henchmen went to great lengths to describe Watergate as "third-rate burglary." I think Nixon might have gotten away with it if every member of Congress had received 10,000 mails saying Nixon was being framed. I do not know how we would solve this problem. We cannot have the government doing the fact checking. It will take decades for the public to sort out the credible channels.
I note that NBC/MSNOW is not mentioned amongst the mainstream media who bowed to Trump's bullying. Surely that network, and above all its parent company Comcast, deserve applause for retaining an impressive roster of excellent, truth-telling journalists who are not muzzled when reporting on Trump's corrupt administration. I presume that Trump has applied pressure against such journalists as Lawrence O'Donnell, Rachel Maddow and Nicolle Wallace, amongst other worthies, but I see no indications of the proverbial bending of the knee. Au contraire, it would seem, as an example, that Mr O'Donnell refers to Trump as "stupid" more often than Trump himself can say "fake news."
I last counted 8 difference regional cultures in the US. Texas is the size of France. Social media creates little cultural countries within families now. But remember, even when we had military generals photos on the front page of the NYTimes against Iraq…. Nothing happened.
Thanks for all your excellent reporting it all deserves way more coverage. It would help if the majority of people were able to employ critical thinking skills instead of being manipulated by emotions. Recently debated with someone who's sure RFK Jr. is right demonizing Dr. Fauci with facts that don't add up yet this person insists Dr. Fauci is as evil as the Nazi Mengele cause RFK Jr. and others like him say it's so, sad.
So discouraging especially after correspondents dinner. Your excellent journalism keeps us hopeful that things will change. Maybe contact The Left Hook’s Wajahat Ali who interviews lots of people every day on Substack and amplifies their work. Your name and work should be out there more. Gobsmacked by your books. 📚
The fracture in the media wasn’t uniform because the GOP had a long term strategy... .
Yes, for most of the television era 3 networks controlled the picture. Nobody had to manage a message when scarcity produced one. The Fairness Doctrine fell in 1987. Talk radio filled the gap within a year. Fox arrived in 1996 with a camera. Cable followed, then the internet, then social feeds, then algorithms…
Liberal & centrist audiences spread across outlets that argue with each other daily and share almost nothing.
The other half did not fragment. Republicans name a single outlet as their primary news source. Talk radio repeats the same. Sinclair segments run inside local newscasts that audiences still trust as neighborhood television. Tens of millions of Americans get one twisted account of events…
A fragmented public is hard to move because it has too many competing signals. A consolidated public is easy to move because it has one.
Reality is you’re all being moved… think for yourself…
I have been screaming about the danger since 2015. People just called me a conspiracy freak. Now I saw “stupidity” will be the demise of the USA. Thanks for your expertise, Craig.
What can an outsider say other than it looks too late for your patriots and heroes of FABLE to arise.
Only civil war will save you from what your electoral laziness and Republican TREASON has welcomed in.
You are in big TWUBBLE.
And I wish you well.
What do you suppose Trump & Putin discuss in their frequent 1 hr.+ phone conversations? I bet they're not talking about ways to strengthen democracy.
With Putin's tutelidge and Trump's lack of any kind of moral compass, and the financial backing treasonous billionaires, they have learned to defeat the integrity & effectiveness of America's critically important 4th estate.
I suppose they discuss the ramifications of an allegiance common to both men - one decidedly unknown to the electorates that allegedly chose them - and one distinctly left out of the conversation here. Both men, either by means of conversion or (in the case of Pootie)by maternal birthright are hobbled by dutiful obligation to a foreign entity, one with goals inimical to the wellbeing of the citizens of their respective countries.
Neither man fully acknowledges nor denies this silent allegiance to the tiny terror state in the muddled east... nor does the so-called '4th estate' dare bring any attention to it whatsoever. So the farce continues - here and every where else - let's look under the rug, for the elephant in the room!
In any honest discussion as to the demise of the west and what led to it, this is the paramount dynamic to begin with. The subversion of USA's sovereignty and power was never a solely "Russian" operation. Once one understands the nature of the entity which took control of post-soviet Rus and then 'exported' it's thuggish army of phony 'religious refugees' to the west, it's impossible to avoid connecting the rest of the dots which lead to the obvious conclusion so studiously avoided here.
The same one so disastrously on display in the current moment, as the money and power bleed from the once mighty Republic in order to fulfill the mad fantasies of ethno-religious supremacists half way across the world.
Our new Thomas Schelling. OOYB, Craig.
No mention of Fox. Why?
Its just SAD..😪😪😪
I read all your books including Boss Rove. You, Sarah Kendzior and Aaron Good are all doing your best, and it truly puzzles me why all three of you don't get interviewed or amplified. Wait a minute, no it doesn't.
The antidote to narcotizing dysfunction might be to cut off the supply of door.
In 1975, after 3 semesters @ UT, Austin, I still could not get into 'Introduction to RTF' (radio TV film) I'd hoped to become a photojournalist.
Too crowded, blame Watergate.
I wonder what happened to those who succeeded, got degrees.
Great essay.
Unger's assessment is fair and reasonable but excludes an important factor-- the technology-driven change in the way we receive information. In the old days, roughly up to the turn of the millennium, there were limited channels of information-- a television channel and the associated network, a morning newspaper, a radio station. These limited channels captured almost all the advertising revenues. Digitization, as articulated by Nicholas Negroponte from the MIT Media Lab, drove money, power, and choice from those owning or controlling a channel and moved it to content providers. Once, your morning paper, your TV, your newspaper, your magazines, and your neighbors and co-workers providing almost all information about things you could not see or hear. Now, everyone with a keyboard can provide you with information. No one is controlling the channel for plausibility or verification. Unger points out the impact of the giant scandals exposed in the media. Major newspapers, TV and radio programs read or watched or listened to the stories in other outlets provided and the professional skeptics who ran those outlets decided if there was something there and then tried to match the stories. Think about this: Could the Watergate reporting have ignited a firestorm if there were a thousand other voices saying this was just "lamestream media" propagating "fake news"? Nixon and his henchmen went to great lengths to describe Watergate as "third-rate burglary." I think Nixon might have gotten away with it if every member of Congress had received 10,000 mails saying Nixon was being framed. I do not know how we would solve this problem. We cannot have the government doing the fact checking. It will take decades for the public to sort out the credible channels.
I note that NBC/MSNOW is not mentioned amongst the mainstream media who bowed to Trump's bullying. Surely that network, and above all its parent company Comcast, deserve applause for retaining an impressive roster of excellent, truth-telling journalists who are not muzzled when reporting on Trump's corrupt administration. I presume that Trump has applied pressure against such journalists as Lawrence O'Donnell, Rachel Maddow and Nicolle Wallace, amongst other worthies, but I see no indications of the proverbial bending of the knee. Au contraire, it would seem, as an example, that Mr O'Donnell refers to Trump as "stupid" more often than Trump himself can say "fake news."
I last counted 8 difference regional cultures in the US. Texas is the size of France. Social media creates little cultural countries within families now. But remember, even when we had military generals photos on the front page of the NYTimes against Iraq…. Nothing happened.