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No discussion about the world around us would be complete without discussing media and media coverage at the outset and some of the problems that we have in media. If our goal is to understand the world around us, no discussion is complete without discussing media. The media, particularly social media, touches almost every area of our lives. Media is the lens through which we experience the world. Let’s face the facts; most people are too busy to be consciously aware of everything going on in the world around them. The media is a way to condense the events of the world into an easily digestible format that allows us to know what is going on in our communities and around the world. An open and accessible media usually leads to a well-informed populace, an integral part of democracy. When the media functions well, people can critically engage with their government. However, that relationship has become complicated in recent years, as you might have noticed.

A Quick History of Media

Before the printing press, distributing information was not an easy task. Everything had to be transcribed by hand or by woodblock. Communication was limited and tightly controlled. Most people could not read unless they were wealthy or a part of the clergy. However, even the rich often only had what would be called an 8th-grade education. However, with the advent of the movable type printing press, information became much more available. This coincided with an increased emphasis on education, which led to higher literacy rates. The movable type printing press also allowed some of the first newspapers to be published. Germany led the way in this regard. John Carolus published the first newspaper, Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien (Account of All Distinguished and Commemorable News), in 1605. From that point onward, newspapers began to pop up around Europe as printing technology spread. Pamphlets and other small avenues of news were influential in the days leading up to the American Revolution. Common Sense by Thomas Paine was the most famous of these and actively advocated for independence from Britain. After the revolution, the founders took to the newspapers again through The Federalist Papers to argue for a new federal republic and how the republic should be formed, and how it should work to ensure that the new freedom that had just been fought for would be secure for future generations. The State of the Union was not a public speech but often simply written

and they were published to Congress yearly. Most people in newspapers would read the speech. Unless you lived near Washington, D.C., most people in 19th Century America read presidential speeches and other vital speeches made on the floor of the U.S. Congress. By the Civil War, the modern newspaper was coming into its own. The New York Times had begun publication in 1850, and the beginnings of what looks close to current news began to form. Newspapers often published a morning and evening edition to cover the entire day. Newspapers in urban areas delivered their papers to the homes of people. Rural people could buy newspapers in towns nearby and later receive them by mail. Reporters would work “beats” or areas of interest and report the findings. Reporters for northern newspapers were so good at their jobs that Abraham Lincoln begged them not to report on Union troop movements during the Civil War because Confederate generals were using them to keep up on Union troops. This contentious relationship with the media and the military would continue well into the modern age.

Media underwent another major upheaval with the arrival of mass broadcasting. Chicago sported the nation’s first radio station in 1925, and soon news would be available to many people instantly. Many thought that the radio would kill newspapers, but that was not the case. Another addition to the world of media that pre-dated radio by about 20 years was the magazine. Magazines often featured more pictures than newspapers and were published weekly or monthly. Some of these original publications continue to live on, like the Saturday Evening Post (usually received by mail on Saturdays), Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue (one of the first magazines 128 years old), and Esquire. Magazines became famous for their features of long-form journalism, poetry, short stories, humor, and many pictures. Women especially took to reading and discussing magazines.

These publications were usually independently owned. Newspapers sported many famous owners like Horace Greeley and William Randolph Hearst. Katherine Graham, the imperious owner of the Washington Post during the Watergate investigation, was recently profiled in the motion picture, The Post.

Media underwent another transformation with the arrival of television. Although the technology behind television had been invented in 1935, World War II delayed its adoption in America until the early 1950s. This is an area where Britain led the world with the first television news broadcasts from the BBC being available before the war, although televisions were in limited use at the time. The extensive radio networks adopted television technology and began regular broadcasts of television programs and news starting in 1948-1950. The effect of bringing pictures and sound into the living rooms of everyday people was profound, and that would significantly affect the course of politics throughout the 20th Century.

Until the smartphone, no single technology had brought the events of the world into our space like the television. Television influenced the 1960 presidential election, and Queen Elizabeth II was the first monarch in history to have her coronation memorialized forever by the cameras of the BBC. Television brought the Vietnam War into the living rooms of Americans with the lottery draft system and the taped footage of the war in almost-real time. Television was the medium that brought Americans the

news that Nixon had been part of the Watergate conspiracy to win the 1972 election and that they had been lied to about the war in Vietnam. TV footage of Civil Rights protests and speeches galvanized public support for the cause.

Television, radio, and magazines all played an essential part in creating the modern media diet. A new product, service, or star wasn’t anything until they appeared on these mass mediums. Music got famous on the radio. New stars became international sensations on TV and through magazines. The media could make or break presidents’ wars and expose the scandal. In its position as the “fourth estate,” the press had absolute power in shaping public perception. The military had to contend with the power of the media, too. Democracy changed when the media exposed things. That was all soon to change. It took time effort by certain people, but soon the independent media would be changing into something very different.

Consolidation of Media

One of the things about the news is that the news is not always the most profitable business. Newspapers had more than a few families in significant cities quite wealthy, but owning and running a newspaper was an expensive endeavor—there were are substantial overhead costs. Radio and TV were also expensive. Reporters were expensive, and the entire business model was based on advertising. The more people reading, listening, or watching directly lead to how much a company could earn. TV and radio had the advantage of music and programs to augment their business. Newspapers enjoyed no such alternative profit centers. By the 1970s, the daily newspaper was becoming a costly and complex business to sustain, especially with rising wages from unionized newspaper reporters and the increasing costs of producing a daily newspaper. The media was about to undergo a considerable change.

TV networks were often owned by the familiar players from radio: NBC, CBS, and ABC. However, at this time, they were independent companies operating on their terms with news and programming. News divisions tended not to make much money due to lower ratings than scripted shows, game shows, or sports. However, these companies began to struggle financially, and the opportunity to turn TV into an immense cash-generating opportunity than it already became apparent to many. Capitalism and the news were about to collide in a big way.

There are plenty of voices who have complained about the capitalist nature of the media. NPR was created to balance the corporate autocracy of media that became prevalent in the 1970s as the modern media conglomerates that we love to hate began to come together. Newspapers began to be bought up and become part of ever-larger conglomerates like the McClatchy Company and Gannett that own most of the local daily newspapers in the United States.

To look at the nearly 2,000 TV channels available might seem like TV is a massive market, but the reality is that about four companies own most television. News, in particular, is concentrated in a comparatively few corporate hands. ABC is owned by

Disney, which now also owns the non-news parts of Fox; Comcast Universal owns NBC. This means a large media conglomerate owns even a liberal bastion like MSNBC. Fox News is independent now, having been formerly owned by News Corporation, founded by Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes. CBS remains an independent apart of the CBS Corporation. CNN, which practically invented cable news as we know it today, was once owned by TBS or the Turner Broadcasting System, which is now owned by AT&T. Most of the information consumed via television is owned by AT&T, Disney, Comcast-Universal, and CBS.

Before the advent of the internet, just a few companies controlled the bulk of the news. Although cable news did a great job of breaking news out of the hands of the extensive three networks, those cable networks are now owned by many of the same people. CNBC is known for its independent reporting of investor news and where the investor-class goes to talk about investing. However, it’s owned by NBC, which Comcast owns. Daily newspapers are no better. McClatchy and Gannett together own 129 daily newspapers, almost the entirety of the daily newspaper market in the United States. Only a few cities sport a truly independent newspaper.

It’s hard to think that it was ever this way, but before smartphones, TV news, particularly the evening news, ruled the news landscape. Like 60 minutes, Nightline, and Frontline, popular news magazines turned small events into national news. While TV news might have been king, the new corporate environment was directly responsible for that. Corporate leaders wanted to create profits, including the news divisions of significant networks. This led to a phenomenon within the industry referred to as “if it bleeds, it leads.” The principle is simple if it’s horrific, shocking, or particularly tragic – anything to create a visceral response – that leads the broadcast. Why? Because people will watch it. When content creates an emotional response, our brains naturally want to consume that content. TV producers figured this out, and rather than picking stories that might be significant for the public or democracy, stories that could create an emotional response created more viewers, which meant higher advertising prices and, thus, greater profits. Both sides of the political spectrum are guilty of this.

MSNBC News will lead with something to scare left-leaning people, and Fox News will in turn lead with something to scare right-leaning people. Before the internet, this system persisted as a way for networks to make millions of dollars and still produce the news. Personalities on different networks and cable shows rose to far higher prominence. Before the corporatization of the news, being a newsreader was an entry-level job. Afterward, being on a news show became a prime gig. The formula was simple and yet incredibly profitable. Find a scary news story, have someone trustworthy and popular read it, and then rake in the advertising dollars as people tuned in.

Doing Good Doesn’t Always Pay the Bills

The kind of reporting that both groups I’ve talked about demand just do not make much money, and it’s no good way to get and keep corporate advertisers. In an increasingly shrunken and corporatized market, media, as we have it, needs to be able to make money. The media pattern, especially in television, has led with what sells rather than what is in the public’s interest. This has coincided with an increase in corporate, rather than independent ownership of almost all aspects of media.

This has become particularly evident within local news channels. Fewer and fewer companies own more and more local affiliate stations. Recently, a big news story had to do with the number of stations Sinclair Broadcasting now owns. Although they remain affiliated with the regular TV networks, Sinclair controls all other non-network programmings, including the evening news. In a shocking corporate take over the news, Sinclair has issued “must-reads,” which are items that local stations must-read on air during a broadcast. These items are not written or reviewed by any local news producer. They are simply printed off, put on the teleprompter, and read as written by the station owner. Because of FCC rules, the networks cannot own many stations themselves. ABC, CBS, NBC, Telemundo, the CW, and Fox have very few owned-and-operated stations, and the ones they do have are usually just the local stations for New York and Los Angeles.

This has allowed Sinclair to buy up at least one station in almost every primary market and create a situation where corporate propaganda becomes the news. Sinclair is a conservative-leaning organization, and the theory is that in their take over of local stations, they are using their ownership to change the perspective of local news and create conditions where they can push their agenda nation-wide at the local level.

The desire to make money over doing what is necessary for the public good strikes again. Newspapers have struggled as well in this corporate environment. Many newspapers have seen their advertising revenues decimated by the internet. This has led to fewer media oversight over many aspects of public life, including government. Most local stations and newspapers don’t have “beats” anymore. The stories covered are often tracked and created by an ever-smaller staff. Newsrooms have been decimated with staff cuts to push up the corporate bottom line. Only the most salacious areas of town get any sort of attention, like crime or local government scandals. The focus is on creating conditions to get advertisers and money rules above all. The internet, with its clickbait headlines and focus on creating what will generate a click, and therefore, eyeballs on ads, has only added to this trend. Doing good in the current news business doesn’t pay.

The Death of Journalism

Before the corporate takeovers, journalism had a far greater emphasis on informing the public about community goings-on. That was trustworthy journalism. To be a “journalist” is to relate what is happening as neutral as possible. However, this kind of journalism has mostly disappeared. Getting a click or a view is far more critical than simply reporting what is going on. Commentary, bias, and editorialization have bled into the news in such a way it is almost indistinguishable. This has led to polarization and has been pushed by the same.

For many people, the news is boring and irrelevant. It’s not like a private person can solve many of the problems they might find on a news site. It makes for terrific Facebook comment anger, but it really can’t extend much beyond that. Most people just disengage.

What can I do? However, in the face of that absolute powerlessness, the media offers a cure: an emotional response. If you can get people angry, scared, or concerned, that will drive the kind of activity that generates revenue. It would be nice to blame people for this, but the reality is that most people are busy, and they have lives. The media is supposed to help them understand the world. That is the actual value of journalism.

People gravitate toward that which affects their lives. Things they need for their children, their relationship, family, and home. That is the area in which they have control and can affect change. Another war in Africa is too far out of their control. We live in a society where we are doing more and more with and for ourselves. We are subjects acting in this world, and more and more pressure is placed on the individual rather than the greater society. Many people don’t see them as a functionary in greater society or even a member of the community but simply a person trying to get through life. The news asks us to consider what kind of world we live in, and we don’t think like that anymore in our culture. When “our” candidate is bashed, it’s not coverage; it’s a personal attack against what we believe in and how we think, not a reasonable discussion of policy or a discussion on what kind of country we want to live in. Many readers and viewers simply want to be told what to think about something. That is not journalism, that’s popular control, and often modern media has much more to do with telling people what to think rather than giving them something to think about.

Saving Journalism

Journalism will only continue to exist if a business model can be found to support it. Reducing the corporate control of media is crucial to creating this condition. As long as corporations control the news and work to milk it for every dollar they can squeeze out of it, nothing will change. That’s not the only side of the problem. There is also the fact that the market has changed, and most of the old media has not kept up with the changes.

Only a few people will care about any cause or problem in the world. The media has realized this and chooses what various experts and editors think is worthy and essential. Thanks to the internet that is bigger and wider than ever before. If we are going to save journalism and we’re going to keep the information that we’ve come to rely on and count on, then we’ll have to find new and exciting ways of supporting that reporting.

Local media would do well to look at what local event publications are writing about and doing and see how they can move in that direction. Letting people know about the news that affects them is as important as distance conflict. Covering the local fair and the variety of businesses is just as crucial as corruption at city hall. If local

media can do that in a fast and exciting way that gets the word out to people in a hurry, then not only will they be able to earn advertising dollars for that, but they would also be able to engage more and more readers.

Many outlets have turned to video and podcasts to interact with their readers, and local media is uniquely positioned to take on this trend and make the most of it. The technology is cheap and easy to understand. I agree with John Oliver that expecting journalists to be interactive and write and produce video is much to do. Still, if journalists worked together as a team (like the old desk system) and found new ways of creating content and distributing it, these media brands would be far more successful than they currently are. Newspapers have writers and editors to brand and get people excited about. Slate, Vox, Medium, and every successful blogger prove that it can and does work. The city daily newspapers need to catch up and follow the lead of so many industry leaders and embrace the new technology rather than wishing people would just do something else. Technology has changed how news is gathered and reported, and no technology has changed that more than social media.

The News and Social Media

In the days of TV news and newspapers, the news didn’t spread all that fast. Cable news and the 24-hour news cycle sped things up faster, and the internet has put the news on permanent warp speed. Now that the internet and the smartphone have arrived, the world moves much more quickly than it used to move. It has also opened new opportunities for news and new kinds of commentary to thrive.

The internet brought many changes, but one of the most significant changes was a new channel to experience news. In the early days of YouTube, new independent news channels like The Young Turks burst onto the scene, offering their unique commentary on the news. Blogs thrived, and new perspectives and voices spread like wildfire. Once traffic was built up, websites could have as much power as mainstream media sources. Social media changed everything because it concentrated on people and got them used to consuming content on a third-party platform rather than directly from the source. At first, this was somewhat welcomed, especially by independent media. In the early days of social media, a modest social following could reach millions of people. However, the internet was soon concentrated in two extensive hands: Facebook and Google.

Facebook and Google, together, control almost all of the internet advertising market. Other platforms offer advertising opportunities, but none have the same market penetration as Google and Facebook. Google possesses the internet because they decide what gets displayed when searching for something using a vast and sophisticated algorithm. Facebook owns the internet through what they put on the Facebook news feed, customized to the user using another extensive algorithm. Every experience on Google and Facebook is increasingly customized to the user based on your profile (Facebook) or search history (Google).

For the news, this means that the spread of “fake news,” or more accurately, commentary and content created, to seem like someone is reporting news events. The digital world is a place where anyone with an internet connection can post anything they like. This gets amplified through social media. What is even more insidious is that often people read things online and then expect significant mainstream media coverage. When the story doesn’t pop up, people also take to social media to accuse the mainstream media of ignoring it.

When our passion subject isn’t getting 24/7 coverage on CNN with graphics and a commentary from Anderson Cooper, the mainstream media is “ignoring big news.” For everyone else, the news is simply irrelevant. If it does not affect them as subjects in the conversation and their life story, it makes it practically non-existent. Often, people lament, “what do we have to do to get people to care about what is going on?” My answer is pretty simple: You can’t. People will either react to something or not. Because the news has become so personalized and balkanized, the experience you have of the world around you will be very different than the experience of anyone else you know. This has significant political consequences and often violent consequences.

Pizzagate

The Pizzagate conspiracy held that influential people like Hillary Clinton, John Podesta, and others were running a child trafficking ring out of the basement of the Comet Ping Pong Pizza Shop in Washington, D.C. Edgar Maddison Welch decided to march into the pizza shop and fired three shots with his AR-15 rifle damaging the building but killing no one. He had read about the conspiracy theory online and decided to “save the children” and saw himself as a hero. The building had no basement, and there were no children. Child trafficking is a problem, but it was not a problem at that restaurant. This was entirely a fabrication of online people writing about something patently untrue. There was no truth to any of it, but it had become such a part of the discussion in certain corners of social media that this 28-year-old man decided to take the law into his own hands. That is the deadly power of social media.

Radicalization

Another way social media has radically changed the news is how social media allows marginalized people to be quickly radicalized to extreme points of view. These groups will use otherwise innocuous news stories to whip like-minded people into a terrible frenzy. This is true both on the right and the left. Extreme leftist views can lead to just as toxic social media posts as some groups on the right. This has been particularly evident within the Feminist and LBGQT community on the left and within the Men’s Rights/Pick Up Artist groups on the right. Much of the radicalization of white supremacy has spread online and taken white supremacy from a fringe group to nearly mainstream and gained followers regularly. Online platforms allow roughly everyone to spout whatever views they like regardless of facts. They can often quickly generate a following simply by giving voice to what others are afraid to say aloud. Once that happens, people can be radicalized promptly to very extreme points of view.

Flat Earthers, Anti-Vaxxers, and Others

It is hard to think that people would have to argue if the earth is flat or if vaccines work in our modern age. However, thanks to the spread of independent “news” sites that spread cherry-picked studies or other expertise with dubious origins, people make accurate life decisions about their children or their perspective on reality-based, unsubstantiated nonsense.

Anti-vaccination groups have become so popular by spreading this kind of misinformation that diseases formerly eradicated are making a comeback, even though vaccines have been used for 75 years and are very safe. However, thanks to bloggers, influencers, and social media, well-meaning but misguided parents choose to put their children’s lives at risk. The current measles outbreak, thought to be unheard in the United States, is the direct result of millions of individual decisions regarding the safety of vaccines. There are enough people that have decided to believe Facebook and other online posts that they have quit vaccinating their children and have reduced herd immunity to such a level that now, many children are suffering from measles, a disease they would typically have been insulated from due to the pervasiveness of vaccines.

The rise of the flat-earth phenomena is mystifying. So-called experts will stand up and try to use complicated math theories and other reasoning to prove that the public has been deceived and that the earth is flat. Both of these groups use various news stories to promote their equally crazy ideas, and they both continue to warp reality through distortion.

The popularity of any of these conspiracy theories would have never happened without social media. Social media is compelling. It can spread information to millions of people very quickly. However, humans are actors in the real world, and the seemingly innocuous things spread in social media can have real consequences.

Perceptions

These groups simply view the news through their radical lens and constantly keep their members in anger about events using their extreme lens to distort and obfuscate reality. This has to lead to a world where, on the same topic, often two people from opposing sides can’t speak because they cannot agree on a shared group of facts. YouTube is awash with videos promoting different ideas of what some people think is the news. Channels are announcing the end of the world daily, and they all use the same metric of “truth” to show that they are reporting the “real news” or what the mainstream media won’t touch. The perception of reality has simply broken down.

Protest Movements and Political Change

Political change in the United States has never been a swift process. The old quote that has been attributed to an unknown Irishman but most often to Winston Churchill: “The Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other

possibilities have been exhausted.” The success of protests and political change has always come at the behest of the media. Media coverage can energize a protest movement or let it wither on the vine. The Vietnam anti-war movement and even the Civil Rights movement grew due to favorable press in the media. This support changed the country in radical ways. Many people were not on board with those changes, and that unhappiness with the changes resulting from the 1960s was capitalized on. The first to take advantage of it was Richard Nixon through the Southern strategy and later by conservative media.

The change in media has changed the nature of protest and the nature of political change. The people’s will to protest for change and have their grievances redressed has begun to wane in the modern period. This is partly because the nature of media has changed, and the country is essentially living in two different realities. For this, there are two familiar characters to thank: Roger Stone and Roger Ailes.

Fox News and Roger Ailes

Roger Ailes became a familiar national figure as a part of the #metoo movement, which sparked as a result of breakthrough reporting by Ronan Farrow in The New Yorker. He laid the sexual corruption in Hollywood bare, which sparked a movement of women, finally revealing the sexual harassment that had been pervasive. Accusations within Fox News were not new; how had Roger Ailes managed to keep himself clear from any allegations until 2016. Although he died in 2017, the last year of his life resulted in him being surrounded by sexual scandals and resigning from his signature network. That is what he will be remembered for; however, his legacy lives on in our political discourse in the form of Fox News.

The story of Fox News began in the last days of the Nixon administration. Despite their best attempts to stop the investigation into the break-in at the Watergate office building, the scandal had gotten out of control, and Nixon was facing impeachment for breaching the DNC headquarters. Roger Ailes and Roger Stone realized that the Nixon Presidency was not lost in Washington. Nixon fired anyone who pursued the Watergate scandal too far. The Saturday Night massacre was evident of that. Watergate was lost in the media. Bob Woodward broke the story in late 1972; he started a series of events that would see Nixon out of office in just two short years. On November 16, 1974, Nixon released the 46 conversations recorded in the White House, which exposed his involvement in the break-in. That release resulted from media pressure, which resulted in Congressional pressure. The news dominated the media. Watergate was lost in the media. The moment the public figured out that both Nixon and Agnew were crooks, their time in office came to a swift end.

This fact left people like Roger Stone and Roger Ailes with a problem and an obvious opportunity. The media of the day was not interested in defending the president or presenting an alternate point of view. The simple fact is that the press should keep elected officials accountable. Roger Stone and Roger Ailes saw media for what it would eventually become: a narrative machine. What if the media could be controlled? What if there was an alternative media that could counter the dominant narrative coming from the networks? What if  there was a public PR arm for Republicans that

didn’t have to exist within the much more liberal, east coast, elite newsrooms at ABC, CBS, and NBC? The nascent idea for what would become Fox News was born. In 1996, after years working at what would eventually become MSNBC, Roger Ailes got his wish, and Fox News launched on October 7, 1996. The American media landscape would never be the same. However, Fox News was a late-comer to the new conservative voices in media. Just a few years before, new voices on an old media had already begun to redraw the political landscape.

Talk Radio

In the early 1970s, FM radio had come online. It was a higher frequency that traveled farther, not based on raw power like an AM frequency, but by its quality. FM was far clearer and served more people. More people could hear stations. FM became famous for music right away, and most of the major stations switched from AM to FM. By the early 1980s, it seemed like AM would die out. A popular article, “what to do with AM radio,” was published. However, AM represented an opportunity for conservative voices. As a result of the transition, AM licenses became inexpensive, allowing a variety of new stations to open their doors. Many of these stations, rather than focusing on music, decided to focus on talk shows, and those talk shows frequently were conservative in nature. Those shows rose to popularity in just a few short years. Rush Limbaugh became nationally known for his popular show that became a beacon for the new conservative voice in American politics.

Conservative political agendas could be pumped into the country using these mediums, not by co-opting the significant media but by simply going around it. Those who wanted to promote neoliberalism’s ideology found a way to spread the ideas of individual liberty, low taxes, and small government 24/7. Under this seemingly benign guise, talk radio and Fox News were also able to fight back on the cultural wars that had broken out in the 1960s. Conservative talk radio was a haven for those with traditional values who felt like the country had simply gone out of control.

Frightened Citizens

Most people are too scared and insecure in their lives to hit the street for any real protest. Even Occupy Wall Street and its global partner protests, as revolutionary as it was, lacked the substance and messaging to articulate a plan clearly. At least, that was how the media covered it. There was no central leader to interview or the primary person to examine their ethics or past purity. Occupy was not ready for TV other than it offered footage of vast people sitting in tents and public parks with signs asking what was wrong with the economy.

It was the closest anyone had come to absolute power, and just as it seemed like Occupy was ready to seize power, violence and anarchists were highlighted as part and parcel of the protest. They drove out good people, the business owners, and others who had started and supported the protest. Then, as winter set in, it withered on the vine. However, previous protests had an outsized effect on society. When people gathered

around a cause, things changed. It often took years to accomplish. The Vietnam War stretched from 1959 to 1973, and it took nearly ten years of protest to stop it. The Civil Rights movement began in 1951, and the required legislation was not passed until 1964; and even then, more work was done well into the early 1970s to get the rights that everyone now enjoys.

For those in powerful positions and others who resisted these social changes, one of the factors that allowed these protest movements to flourish was favorable media coverage. The world of 1975 was very different from just 20 years before. The 1960s had been exhausting with violence, protests, and race riots. The horrors of Vietnam were broadcast right into living rooms. When the anti-war protest began to gain steam in 1963-1965, the media reported that. The increased coverage played its part in the war, eventually becoming unpopular and ending due to popular demand. The press became a real problem for the wealthy and powerful who did not want their agendas to be so affected by populism.

One of the lessons learned from the anti-war and civil war movements was that real and radical social change was possible. Years of protest undid a war and erased the social construct of Jim Crow. In no small part, this was because the mainstream media ruled the media landscape firmly. It was not a fast process, but it happened. The independent press and exposure of Watergate ended Nixon. People had power and the power to bring otherwise influential people to account.

That’s when that power got co-opted. And part of the co-opting of that power had to do with who controlled the media. When the press moved from independent control to corporate control, the profit motive trumped all other reasons, like public service. This has left independent press to continue to do its best to talk about what the mainstream media dare not touch so as not to kill an advertising partnership or a revenue stream.

Cable news allowed more channels and views outside of the extensive three networks to flourish, and the advent of the internet amplified this. However, much of the power of public perception remains in the hands of mainstream media. What the media does and does not cover can cause political change or not cause political instability. What is different now is that there is more criticism of the media. Because the business model of the internet is not perfected, there is little original reporting coming from independent online sources. Democracy Now does some actual reporting; Breitbart has some reporters, as does The Young Turks and The Huffington Post. Think Progress and Buzzfeed also has some original reporting, but they do not have the resources of the cable news channels or the news networks, or even the daily newspapers. Many of these organizers have suffered layoffs recently due to falling revenues due to Facebook and Google increasing their market share of advertising revenues.

This has all led to a significant polarization of media. Now, people read the media that confirms their biases rather than thinking about the facts of the situation or even looking at events through the lens of commonly shared societal values. The current media environment has balkanized points of view and has divided citizens based on

what each individual finds valuable to themselves. There are no shared facts or shared values. There are merely 350 million points of view that may or may not coincide. This has created a deadlocked Congress and no actual ability for any side to make true change in the country because no one is speaking the same language or working from the same set of facts. This does not have to be the case for everyone. The only way to break out of the current paradigm is to change how one views the news.

There are many ways to interact with the media. It’s not an impregnable hellscape. Rather, one must consider it critically and find out how the media works and then adjust the understanding of the information through the lens of reporting, no matter the source.

Modern Media Myths Debunked

Myth #1: There is a grand media conspiracy

One of the most frequent questions I get asked is why does the mainstream media not cover more of the memes, blog posts, and other digital news ennui that frequently finds a quick audience on Facebook. Many of my alternative reading friends will post with vitriol in their words, “Why isn’t the mainstream media covering this?”

The answer is simple: proof. Much of what populates alternative media sites is hearsay and conjecture. There is not a grand media conspiracy to protect people in power. There is a burden upon the mainstream media to report actual facts. Networks have standards and practices that control what can and cannot be reported on the air or the page. Other media outlets do not operate with these restrictions and are free to say whatever they want to without such standards. There’s nothing wrong with writing that on a personal blog or even a popular blog. The chance of a lawsuit is very slight. However, as Gawker has learned, if a media company is big enough, people who’ve been subject to the consequences of hearsay and conjecture will lawyer up and sue the media outlet and win significant judgments if the case is good. Due to ethical and legal concerns, most media organizations will not touch a story until real and verified sources make claims if those claims can be verified: even better. While it might seem convenient that various institutions, companies, and influential people do get lambasted in the press, most media outlets cannot report on it until there is some sort of claim and that claim is verified.

Myth #2: The media isn’t being “Fair.”

Another complaint about the news that is quite popular in this election is how “fair” the news is to differing candidates. Bernie Sanders’ supporters were convinced that the mainstream media was not giving him a fair shake even though he was constantly mentioned in any conversation about the democratic candidates. The person who was sucking the air out of the newsroom was Donald J. Trump. Rather than rail against Hillary supporters and blame the media for not giving their candidate enough air-time, people should spend more time doing something for their candidate. Besides, what a Trump supporter might consider “fair” would be different than what a Sanders or Hillary supporter might think “fair.” After all, it’s

not like an upstart candidate can’t take the whole party by storm and turn the coverage in their direction. Barack Obama was good at it, so good; he stole the nomination right out from under Hillary Clinton in 2008.

Her supporters didn’t complain about the media or blame a conspiracy. They campaigned for Obama. But this is a uniquely modern problem with a far more significant implication. The media is not here to validate people and their biases. The news is many things, but it is not meant to confirm preferences; it is not meant to give a version of the truth that makes sense to a specific audience with a particular idea about things. However, current news is increasingly pressured to do just that, and one of the most significant pressures of that is advertising dollars.

The news and good journalism should disturb and anger because that’s when change starts. Many people talk about how the media is dividing us and how the media is working against this or that. A few factors drive the media: ratings, a reporting of reality, what affects society as a whole, and a flavor of the culture. This is deeply affected by the people who work in newsrooms and an editorial. This is as true for the new media as it was for the old, and where the frustration comes in is that people live in these information bubbles. So when something is said or happens that doesn’t confirm what they already think, they act irrationally as if someone is lying to them. It is often easier to blame the media than self-reflective on what we bring as consumers to the news.

I am often frustrated by the collaboration we have in media in some of the goings-on in our society. There is no shortage of problems to report on, corporations to go after, public ills to bring to light, and things to get people worried about. The media can be a tremendous force for good, but it can also enable ignorance.

Rules for Media Consumption

The modern media is a lens. It is a way of looking at the world. The current media is an amalgam of people who have made decisions about what is important and worthy and, most importantly, what has evidence behind it. In our modern age, we require gatekeepers more than ever before. However, it is essential to remember that the media is only a perspective on things. To have a cautious view, it is necessary to have a diverse media diet and understand what is being read or watched and the bias or agenda alongside that content.

Rule #1: News Is a Narrative

This principle comes right on in the language. In journalism circles, they refer to different events “stories,” and the ever-present question on every journalist’s mind is “where is the story?” When reading or watching the news, look for the narrative. What is the story? Where is that story leading? What might the exposure of that story reveal? However, it is the reader’s burden to figure out what the writer or commentator, especially in independent media, is bringing to the level. What is their agenda? How does that change the story?

Rule #2: Understand the Bias of the Story

Unless the news is coming from the raw Associated Press or Reuters Feed, which is mainly written by AI now, every news story will have some bias. There are helpful guides to understand how far right or left any given news source is on a spectrum. However, the language can often reveal where the bias lies. The next time you read a news story, start looking for a preference. Do they support correct staple positions or staple left parts?

Rule #3: Who Does the Story Affect?

One of the most revealing things about news is who is affected by the story. Is the report critical of the government or supportive of a policy? Does a story reveal the true intentions behind a radical group or passively allow their bad behavior? How does the story jive with your ethics? If a story is about a corporation, has any investigation been done into the actual intent or the science behind the behavior? If an account doesn’t do some simply due diligence about the event, it is reasonable to suspect it, even if the publication confirms personal political biases. This is also a chance to check sources. Who did they talk to? And who are they? If a story leaves the reader with questions, it’s time for further investigation.

Our Complicated World

The world is a complicated place. The public relies on the media to help them make sense of what is going on. That is the actual value that the media has always had. To help the general public understand what is going on around them. However, the loss of faith in this institution is radically changing the world we live in. Now everyone consuming news must contend with people portraying opinion as truth and “facts” as a definitive truth requiring radical change.

The news business has changed. The media has changed, and what we think of as media has changed. All media is not created equal. The diversity of views and channels requires the public to be more thoughtful about watching than ever before. It is essential to think critically about the world and think critically about the media. The media is one constant narrative shaped and formed by evidence and too often opinion. For someone not engaged in media, this is a confusing field. It can be hard to trust authority. It can be hard to trust institutions, especially given the thousands of blogs, YouTube channels, and other places that will happily play on a lack of trust in major media and institutions.

The modern world is high-speed, and the modern world is complicated. Nothing is simple, and it probably never was, but that was the use media had. It turned the incredibly complex into the simple and yet understandable for the average person. If anything has been lost in the modern media environment, it is that simplicity and the actual value of media: making the world a little bit less complicated.