Greener: Traditional Journalism Is Dead

What has long been considered traditional journalism no longer exists.
Much of this death spiral has been self-inflicted, but surely not all of it. The combination of changing technology and the dramatic shift to advocacy journalism has created the current toxic state of the profession. How did we get here? Rule one: follow the money.

From Journalism to Advocacy
As a lad who has been on the political playing field in one way or another for 50 years, I can say this advocacy journalism is a relatively new phenomenon. For certain, the elitist establishment media on both coasts have long evidenced a favoritism for the liberal point of view. At the same time, there were a few basic “rules” that applied to either side of a political discussion. No more. All that counts is the narrative.

The End of Mass Media
The advent of high-speed internet dramatically impacted the business models for traditional journalism platforms. There is a reason they called it “mass media” for such a long time. The logic was simple. The wider your appeal, the broader and larger your audience, and thus the more attractive your platform is to advertisers. Market demands relegated extreme positions to receiving scant attention. That would have been bad for business.

Narrowcasting and the Digital Disruption
In a digital world, there is no economic justification for printing and distributing a newspaper. Plus, the consumer can now read the “news” in full at their leisure. For electronic platforms—legacy linear television and traditional radio—technology also has played a major role. Cable television started the trend towards narrowcasting. Satellite radio allows you to listen to anything you want, often with no commercial interruptions. Throw in Spotify, Pandora, etc., and, once more, the trend is all in the direction of communicating with those who agree with your tastes and positions.

Singing to the Choir
For legacy corporate media, the new economic model centered on providing content that is little more than singing to the choir. Mass media itself is dead. In its place, we now have an affinity-based, narrative driven presentation of information both supporting their narrative and either ignoring or dismissing, not just opinions that conflict with the narrative, but also observable facts. How else to explain the uproar over the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times failing to endorse Kamala Harris in 2024? Or, the martyrdom sought by those at CBS who refuse to even acknowledge there might have been just a teeny little bit of bias in their coverage?

The Loss of Journalistic Norms
For many years, my experience with the media matched dealing with someone who had their thumb on the scale for liberals and Democrats. However, that did not mean there were no norms that applied to everyone. If you completely reversed your position on an issue, you had to account for it. Otherwise, you were a hypocritical partisan.

Selective Outrage and Media Memory
The killing of Americans by the Federal Government has not always led to massive protests such as those we are witnessing in Minneapolis. Compare the coverage of those protests to that of the FBI’s takeover of the Branch Davidian Complex in the Waco, Texas community in 1993. President Clinton personally approved the actions taken by the FBI. In February of that year (as in one month after he took office), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) failed in their attempts to deliver warrants and secure weapons, resulting in the death of four ATF agents and six within the complex. After that, the FBI took control. On April 19, they fired tear gas into the complex, which caught on fir,e resulting in the deaths of 76, including at least 25 children, all Americans. No widespread protests. Go figure.

From Bush to Obama to Trump
As I said earlier, this trendline did not occur overnight. Yes, the media raised a stink when George W. Bush was awarded the Presidency in 2000. There were few calls for the Supreme Court to be reconfigured as we have heard in recent years when rulings have not advanced the Progressive cause. In 2008, something resembling hero worship started with the election of Barack Obama. Suddenly, what had been bad became good and vice versa. When Donald Trump ran for President, there was little pretense about blatant partisanship. After all, a threat to democracy, as defined by the media, must be taken head-on, even if that means turning logic upside down. The summer of 2020 completed the meltdown with the coverage and attitudes towards the “mostly peaceful” protests. When Joe Biden won the office in 2020, the media turned itself inside out, pretending what could easily be seen by anyone without a Progressive agenda. Joe Biden did not possess the cognitive ability to serve in the office.

Reverse Engineering the Narrative
Now, after the 2024 election, all we see is reverse engineering to fit the narrative. “What Donald Trump said or did is wrong. Tell me what he said or did.” Facts no longer remotely impact coverage.

The Economic Endgame for Legacy Media
All of this takes us back to where we started. Those most interested in the news are measurably more partisan in their outlook than those who are not. At the same time, we have pretty much reached the economic limits of narrowcasting. These legacy corporate media platforms, originally designed for a mass media approach, are now often only pale imitations of what a given audience is seeking and getting via digital platforms (including social media). These traditional sources for “news” are at the end of their economic rope, and they cannot do much about it.

A Fading Hope for Traditional Journalism
The one opening left to the legacy media is to offer up a presentation of facts and information in a fashion more consistent with traditional journalism. The problem is that moderates are moderates about everything, including their consumption of news. Good luck to Bari Weiss and her modest attempts to have CBS resemble the traditions of Murrow and Cronkite. My own take is she is p……g up a rope. I do not think the numbers work.

Common Sense
Traditional media has fallen, and they cannot get up. America is the poorer for it.