The Mainstream Media Thinks I’m Stupid
Breaking Free from their Algorithmic Arrogance
The arrogance of the journalists working for the main news organizations is unrivalled in the media world. They feel they have been equipped with some gift of providence - an ease of intellect that would allow them alone to tell a story to their captive audience. Readers are meant to be receptive and respectful. If readers were to dare to disagree, then they have been poorly informed, misguided, and well, stupid. If you are a lowly blogger, well, … enough said.
With the rise of online media groups, bloggers, freelance investigative journalists and social media communities, the traditional news messaging process has been turned on its head. Their financial model has collapsed and quality compromises are continuously imposed. And mainstream media is understandably upset about this. I got to witness their rage firsthand during a media panel event.
On the weekend I had the privilege of attending and participating in the Freedom Games in Łódź Poland. The Polish political arena is anything but dull as they are facing many important challenges and opportunities. The passion of the debates, the dynamism of the views and the thirst for understanding was refreshing. But one particular panel stood out: New Strategies for the Media: How to Inform in a World of Polarization and Chaos.
The Panel of Hatred
The New Media Strategies panel pitted the traditional media groups against the online upstarts and it did not take long for the rage and bitterness to foam to the top.
The moderator, Aleksandra Karasińska, and two speakers, Dariusz Rosiak and Sylwia Czubkowska, were from the traditional, large media groups. They started out bemoaning how the algorithms and news flows are controlled by three white men in the United States (“and one of them is supporting Trump so that says it all”) and that people are no longer able to get access to reliable information. They went back to the time of Google buying Double-Click in 2008 as the moment that the Internet (and privacy) was destroyed by commercial and marketing interests.
It wasn’t supposed to be that way. Social media, namely Twitter, was intended to deliver the Arab Spring, bring people together and democratize information. With Twitter, these journalists expected to be able to change the world. Instead, Elon Musk, they argue, destroyed Twitter, making it a toxic wasteland controlled by un-moderated alt-right radicals and sex offenders.
The gripe-fest took a sudden turn when the third speaker, Michał Brański, founder of the online news site, O2.pl, was finally given a chance to weigh in. He seemed to think that everything on social media was fine, that the algorithms aided people in finding information they want to read while giving more individuals the opportunity to publish their views and build communities. He did not believe that everyone had to think the same way, that they could come together within communities to sort out the valid information and that individuals can be trusted to reach a degree of understanding on their own.
Michał publishes an online news page with a corral of well-known authors who contribute freely and have loyal followings. People prefer to get their news from his online service, he argues, because of the low (and diminishing) quality of the mainstream media – what was translated from Polish as “shit journalism”. The decline in rankings for traditional media, as a source for news in Poland, from first to third place (after “Search”), Michał argued, was proof enough of the failure of large media groups to provide quality reporting.
This triggered Aleksandra to react aggressively, forgetting her role as the moderator. The panel then evolved into a free-for-all of mainstream journalists releasing their angst toward the democratization of the news, expressing that:
the public could not be trusted
they needed the journalist to sort out the bias and disinformation
they had to be handed the news with a media “quality-control” label
if not, then they would be misinformed, believe radical political views and be manipulated.
There was an undeniable arrogance in how traditional journalists believed they were the authorities who should control which views constituted actual news - the truth (versus the propaganda and misinformation running rampant on social media). If it weren’t for the “responsible” media, I suppose, most people would probably be drinking raw milk and getting coffee enemas.
Michał questioned whether traditional journalists were better equipped to determine what was factual and whether their bias was not also leading them in their reporting. He had to remind the panel that people are not stupid and that they want to find out what is and is not true (but from how they see the world). We have to learn to trust people, trust their capacity to come to an understanding and trust that they want to sort out facts from falsehoods. What Michał was telling the room was that, in not trusting the public, the mainstream media was arrogant.
And the panel did a good job proving his point.
In the Algorithm Prison, Elon is the Warden
I agree with Michał. Social media has given us an amazing opportunity to bring together the widest variety of news and information sources. The algorithms are not prisons – we have to learn to train them. I was always saddened when information was taken off of social media (people tried too many times to take my research and exposés off the web). I have never blocked people and am frustrated when I cannot access certain responses in threads from evidently insecure actors. What Elon Musk did was confront the cancel culture. His introduction of Community Notes allowed communities to present other views and let people think for themselves. This “letting people think for themselves” is what has triggered these journalists as well as the activists who stand beside them.
During this panel, I realized that when journalists and political actors attack Musk, it is not about his politics, his wealth or his success. He stands as a direct obstacle to those who wish to use the media to impose their ideas directly on the public while controlling dissent via algorithmic censorship and coordinated efforts to remove (cancel, block, isolate) antagonists. Recall the relentless movements to ban, demonetize or delink controversial writers, podcasters and influencers from the Internet during the social justice mayhem before Musk bought Twitter.
So when writers attack X (they are the only ones still calling it “Twitter”) via its proxy, Elon Musk, they are criticizing how people are allowed to say offensive things (ie, things these journalists and activists disagree with). They claim Musk has turned the site into a cesspool. I have heard that line a lot but somehow don’t see it. Rather than controlling the flow of information, the first thing Musk did was stop the built-in bias of the content-moderation and algorithms. Suddenly my X followers were actually receiving my posts again, unlike Facebook, which has walled me off from most of my followers (unless I pay them to boost posts). What people resent about X now is the open, sometimes messy, flow of ideas.
Democracy doesn’t function when only people who agree with me (or claim to some manufactured consensus) are allowed to speak. Only arrogant journalists, activist zealots and sociopaths would think that is a good idea.
This resentment has been brewing for almost three years. Der Spiegel was so angry at their loss of influence that they recently likened Elon Musk to a Nazi. And people wonder why the mainstream media is losing readership and public trust.
Opposing ideas enrich my views, wake me up from my ‘dogmatic slumber’ and challenge me to respond or re-evaluate. Nothing is sacred in the search for understanding and the number of people who seek censorship is a worryingly common trend within so-called liberal democracies.
Fire Management
One of the objectives of the Firebreak is to be a check on journalistic abuse, to be a voice of dissent to a media industry bent on controlling information, imposing the views of special interests disguised as news and preventing the spread of activist-driven bias. In our first year, we have revealed how NGOs like EWG or NRDC used journalists as their campaign foot soldiers, how foundations are paying journalists from the Guardian, New York Times or Associated Press to report on the work that NGOs they fund are doing and we are letting the people often attacked in the news be able to tell their story. Unlike the mainstream media, we believe readers have sufficient intelligence to sort out good information from bad.
Meanwhile, as these Gen X journalists think they are determining what the truth is, the Gen Zs are all on TikTok sorting out the future. Oh … the arrogance of ignorance in these lost media professionals.