Tag: journalism
Manufacturing Consent
The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda. That Manufacturing Consent is nearly as old as I am and introduces a concept as enduring as the propaganda model of communication is both depressing and a testament to the fact that Herman and Chomsky were and remain correct in their thinking. If anything, it's a model that has become increasingly relevant as mass media has been hollowed out by technology companies and subjected to ongoing attacks by both the politically powerful and the wealthy (of which there is an ever increasing overlap). Ownership: mainstream media has remained in the hands of large corporations or bought up by conglomerates. This is also true in cases where tech and social media platforms have replaced traditional outlets. Advertising: media outlets remain dependent on advertising for revenue, but this revenue continues to shrink as more and more advertising spend is directed to social media platforms. The reach promised in exchange for outlets embracing these platforms has never materialized in a way that makes up for that loss of revenue. Sourcing: outlets still depend on access journalism and reporting. This shapes their coverage as access to sources is contingent on concessions they make to maintain said access. Flak: this facet of the model is perhaps the most important at the moment. Reporting is attacked, news organizations are attacked, journalists are attacked, sources are deliberately unmasked, free speech is attacked. There's an unceasing assault on any news and reporting that does not align with the prescribed narrative. Independent journalists and outlets are the only ones taking risks in the face of these threats to deliver well-informed and important work to the public and their subscribers. Fear ideology: this has been relevant since Manufacturing Consent (when it was identified as anti-communism) with no sign of diminishing. Any reporting that runs counter to the government narrative is attacked using national security and fear of external threats as a basis to delegitimize or suppress said reporting. What we've lived with and continue to live with is an information environment that does a disservice to the public by relaying only what this model allows for. How do you hold power to account when you're beholden to it?
Murder the Truth
Murder the Truth is another entry in a line of books illustrating the ways in which immense wealth has warped the foundations of American society. We all watch in horror as things bend, fold in and wonder when, just when, it all snaps. The influence that wealth provides manifests itself in myriad different ways but, in this case, it's used in the pursuit of attacking journalists and burying the truth. David Enrich has not only done his research, he's lived through exactly what this book covers. He presents case after case, tracing a thread through them, of powerful interests focused in on upsetting the precedent set in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan . We, as a society, have benefitted from journalists holding power to account and are now living through a period in which they are under attack whenever they attract the attention of anyone with the money to weaponize the legal system against them. Enrich doesn't have a solution here, but he does raise the alarm. Journalists should be paid more but have seen the enterprises that employ them robbed of revenue by tech platforms. In many cases, tech founders then turn around and attack the journalistic institutions they impoverished for having the temerity to report on any number of misdeeds. Journalists shouldn't need exorbitantly expensive libel insurance. We should be championing a free press but, instead, it's under attack from all sides.
El Paso
El Paso is a heartfelt, beautifully written tale that manages to connect the city's history to that of her family's, other migrant families and the dynamics of immigration woven deeply into the fabric of the United States. I knew so little of this history and it was refreshing to learn about it — I knew El Paso in the abstract. The name, Beto O'Rourke, At the Drive-In , the shooting at the Walmart, I knew these things, but I didn't know what made the city what it is. Jazmine Ulloa manages to weave the micro in with the macro as she touches on the lives of historical figures, her relatives and the broader story of immigration. It's a narrative woven such that its elements are inseparable because they are, in fact, that — it's simply a question of the story being properly told. The United States is a country of immigrants, within it El Paso is a city of immigrants. It's deeply beautiful, often tragic and a history that's still being written. Ulloa centers people and through them tells a story rooted in struggle, politics, journalism and shared humanity.
Postscript
Mass layoffs are a fact of life in journalism. Your favorite writers and editors have dealt with them. But they weren’t supposed to happen at The Post.
How to Stand Up to a Dictator
Maria Ressa is a remarkable individual. She's a journalist, author, activist and is both innovative and tireless in her pursuit of truth and justice. How to Stand Up to a Dictator is an essential read and an especially relevant one. She has faced off against rising authoritarianism at home in the Philippines, fought to fend off the malign influences of big tech and refused to back down no matter how difficult that fight became. Journalism is at its best and most essential when it is fearless, when it speaks truth to and holds power to account. Ressa exemplies this. She faces challenge after challenge and is unwavering in her determination to face and overcome evert single one. Now, a few years after this was published, we continue to face the rise of authoritarians across the globe. Sitting here in the United States, it's easy to see the parallels. We have a president who has weaponized the department of justice to attack his enemies both past and present with trumped up lawsuits and charges, a president openly and brazenly engaged in corrupt acts to enrich himself, a president commanding a rogue, militarized and inept immigration agency as his own secret police force, a president itching to enact martial law, a president clearly looking to curtail the rights of anyone he disagrees with, a president overseeing an economy failing everyone but the rich who cozy up to him, a president seeking to reignite imperialism abroad and tear down alliances in the process. We need journalists like Ressa now more than ever. In the US, those journalists are either independent or operate as small cooperatives. Corporate media is being bought up, consolidated and turned into little more than state propaganda, while pretending otherwise for anyone naive enough to believe them. We, collectively need to stand up to dictators and having journalists do so is vital. Organize, support one another and do not stop fighting, do not stop working to get the truth out there.
Big Opinion, Big Budget
The New York Times’ choice to publish a video op-ed by the CEO of Patreon points at why exec-produced video op-eds might be a bad idea.
Owned
Owned is, unfortunately, a fairly shallow look at how the patronage of tech billionaires has managed to push several prominent journalists to the political right, causing them to defend and align with the interests of their patrons. I became aware of Glenn Greenwald due to his involvement in reporting the Snowden leaks and was vaguely aware of Matt Taibbi. Greenwald appeared to do perfectly fine work with respect to the Snowden leaks and I knew them to both be a bit, well, abrasive . Owned provides a bit more detail about their origins and then delves into their rightward shift. It ties that shift to their financial interests and, given how that shift coincided with their improved financial prospects made possible by the largess of rightwing Silicon Valley elites, it makes sense that their patrons guided their views. This is hardly a unique phenomenon though and it's a trend that's helping further the long, drawn out death of journalism in the United States and abroad. Billionaires don't buy newspapers, broadcasters and journalists to benefit the public, they do it to shift the public discourse in a direction that favors them. If the actions and motivations of any given billionaire appear to align with those of the public, that is merely a temporary illusion. Tech titans throw their money at journalists to buy favorable coverage. They provide access in exchange for influence on coverage. They buy newspapers to shift the coverage, hollow them out and destroy them. It's a corrupting, corrosive pattern. Where then do you turn for information? Ah, yes, the platforms said billionaires also control.
A Moment For Independent Media
At a time when large companies are capitulating their content presence at the drop of a hat, a quick note on why a more-flexible independent media still matters.
Copaganda
Copaganda is the most important book I've read in a while both for its impact and its insight. As a working civil rights attorney Alec Karakatsanis is supremely qualified to expound on the subject of the book's namesake. "Copaganda convinces people that, sadly, much to our discomfort as caring people, there is no way to solve the serious problems of our society. Having reluctantly come to that conclusion, we now have to expand authoritarian measures to manage those problems through violence. We wish we didn’t have to do this, but we’ve tried everything else" Karakatsanis absolutely demolishes the credibility of ostensibly well-respected institutions like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and journalists from Vox and elsewhere that have become edge-lord copaganda peddlers. Much like The AI Con skewered the proponents of the covered technology as "synthetic text extruding machines", Karakatsanis does the same to the criminal justice system by consistently referring to it as the "punishment bureaucracy". Justice isn't served, but the carceral industry is. He backs each point with myriad pertinent anecdotes — from compounding fines used to ruin the lives of the poor, cash bail as a tool to do the same, criminalizing homelessness and addiction rather than treating the root causes, ignoring assaults, domestic violence and other crimes committed by police when calculating statistics, cherry-picking data, ignoring wage theft and corporate crime wholesale, coercing defendants accused of minor offenses to plead out because the "justice system" is incapable of handling of cases created to fund municipalities through fines and line the pockets of private companies profiting from institutionalized injustice. It's a brutal, unfair and — arguably — criminal system in its own right. We don't need more police. We absolutely don't need more ICE agents, we don't need more state violence sold as a solution to problems that it exacerbates. We need far fewer police. ICE should be abolished outright. Similar organizations need serious examination and reduction. This system is a harmful bureaucracy if you're looking for an example of one. We need support for low income housing, compassionate approaches to treating addiction and mental health issues, broadly available and freely provided public health care and an actual understanding of the problems we're trying to solve. Institutions professing to have journalistic integrity that engage in peddling copaganda are demonstrating that they have no integrity at all. : Well, once respected and now a joke. : Perhaps respected at some point, now also a joke.
Spanfelled
G/O Media, the company that tried to get Deadspin to stick to sports, bows out. They leave behind a scrappier media ecosystem with more business-savvy writers.
On Air
I've never been a fan of NPR in any meaningful sense — I trust their reporting, find it credible and reliable but have never become attached to its more lauded shows and the hosts attached to them. Steve Oney does a magnificent, engaging and thorough job of reporting the organization's raucous early days, its reporting missteps, scandals and successes. While I may not be deeply invested in NPR, I find it — as an institution — to be trustworthy and an essential part of the public discourse. It's fair-minded, reliable and fallible, as any human organization is going to be. Oney manages to make this retelling both fair minded without becoming clinical. I was never aware of much of this history — the drug use, efforts to unionize, the reckless spending of CEO Frank Mankiewicz, the Juan Williams firing and on and on. I am aware of the ebb and flow of conservative efforts to cut funding to NPR, PBS and the CPB. Reagan tried it and failed, Mitt Romney advocated for it and the altogether more fascistic, imbecilic and incompetent Trump administration seeks to do the same. They dislike NPR because they accuse it of having a liberal bias which is, at most, a bit of a tilt. A bent? Reality has a liberal bent and today's conservatives are often at war with reality. We're lucky to have NPR, we should fight for its continued survival, particularly when we already underfund public institutions like it and have managed to gut journalism as an industry writ large. : Reagan's presidency was an abject failure with bad policy, scandal and consequences we're still living with today. One of the worst modern presidents. Truly. : See the at war with reality bit and the epistemological crisis we currently find ourselves in.
Where The Lede Gets Buried
At Tedium, we sometimes bury the lede intentionally, and it may seem strange, but sometimes it works.
Caught In The Middle
The mess with Bezos and The Washington Post is reflective of a trend that keeps popping up this year: The powerful entity stepping in it without considering the collateral damage.
Gatekept
Thoughts on a bruise to the ol’ ego that hurt a little more than I thought it would. But hey, it gives me a chance to talk about gatekeeping.
The Paywall’s Final Frontier
Word that CNN is getting a paywall feels like a sign that good information is more expensive than ever.
When Robots Aggregate
The mess between Forbes and Perplexity AI highlights how soulless and extractive aggregation can be in the wrong hands. It’s the wrong direction for LLMs.
Partnering with an AI company means I can no longer trust your output
Look, I get that publications are hurting for revenue and AI companies are handing out cash but you're not just providing access to written and human-generated output — you're giving up goodwill.
Berliner Goes Tabloid
Considering the tale of the longtime NPR editor who decided to pull a Bulworth at the tail end of his long career.
The Post-SEO Era
What happens when a news site launches that basically ignores the SEO orthodoxy? Easy: They do fascinating stuff. Hence, Robinhood’s Sherwood.
Recapturing Real Time
A decade ago, real-time social news coverage was a machine that simply worked. With our recent social media disarray, it feels broken. Can it be fixed?
Spinning The Dead
I am so obsessed with trying to figure out who Deadspin’s new owners are that it led me to some late night spam-blog sleuthing.
Create For Yourself
With disruption hitting the media industry acutely in 2024, now is the time to lean into owning your creative work. Have a say in your creative destiny.
An Incomplete Picture
A recent scandal around a popular YouTuber’s nonprofit foundation has created a lot of drama, but what it’s missing are voices that understand the nonprofit sector.
Give ’Em Less Data
What if the problems with the news ecosystem could be solved by shutting off the data pipeline to the advertisers? After all, they’ve spent the last 30 years aggressively exploiting it—and us.
In The Age Of Culling
Discussing the dumb thing CNET did in an effort to please the Google Gods: Don’t cull old news content to improve your SEO ranking. That’s your history!
Old Archives, New Controversy
The New York Times has the most robust online archives of any newspaper, but it’s proving difficult to square their handling of a recent controversy with the quality of those archives.
When Newsletters Were Printed
What can modern newsletter authors learn about newslettering from an era when people actually mailed these things? A lot, it turns out, according to this book I bought.
Longform Brevity
Alt-form storytelling, a key magazine-and-newspaper design trend, hasn’t truly flourished on the modern internet. Axios could go way further than it does.
❝The Quote Issue❞
“We use a lot of quotes at Tedium, but we’ve never done an issue of Tedium ABOUT quotations,” Ernie said when writing this piece. “Let’s fix that.”
Dead on Archival
Considering the challenges that face shuttered newspapers with decades or even centuries of material to preserve.
Pushing Photos Through Wires
The technology used to distribute photos through news wire services inspired a whole bunch of innovations with use cases beyond newspapers. Like television.
Source Tags & Codes
The saga of the Missouri governor reflects a failure by the powerful to embrace curiosity—curiosity encouraged by the HTML language he fails to understand.
How I Research Stuff
If you’re a longtime reader of Tedium, you might wonder how I manage to uncover so many strange stories. Well, let me tell you. Hopefully it’s inspiring.
Strip-Mined News
Local newspapers have already faced issues with outsourcing and an array of cuts for years. But the threat is changing—and you should know what it looks like.
News In Small Bytes
Newspapers said they wanted to protect the print product, but they were raring to go when it came to experimental online news approaches in the early '80s.
Just The Fax, Ma’am
Newspapers once saw fax machines as an opportunity to distribute breaking news to the masses—then they saw it as a way to reach the niches. Neither worked out.
The Free Ride’s Over
For decades, ad-supported free daily newspapers defined commuting. But the Washington Post Express’ demise shows the model is headed towards the history books.
Channel None
For nearly 30 years, many schools aired a daily news show in exchange for free AV equipment. Channel One was a hit—but the ads drove seemingly everyone crazy.
Michael Wolff’s Internet Book Empire
The Trump administration tell-all scribe has a history with digital publishing that goes way back. In fact, he edited one of the first guides to the internet.
There’s Always Next Year
The state of our Tedium in 2018 looks kind of a lot like 2017, for better or worse. Let’s take a deep breath, everyone, and hope for the best.