Media Survival Guide

The landscape is crowded and hard to untangle. The time has come for everyone to be their own editor. Here's how.

A continuing theme here is the way changes in the media ecosphere have played out across society. A hit TV show used to reach 30+ million viewers; the final episode of M*A*S*H reached a not-since-repeated 106 million Americans. Terrestrial radio (as distinct from satellite or online) was a hitmaker when tens of millions knew the top forty songs. Maybe no one’s missing “The Gong Show,” “Wooly Bully,” or “The Macarena,” but neither are there cross-cultural phenomena like “All in the Family” or “Let it Be.” Today, a hit TV show reaches 6 million at most. The most popular ones are no longer even on broadcast television. Today, no single person can sing the top forty, and the Netflix’s of the world have no heft.

Across the entire culture, the de-massification of media has had broader implications than just music and television. For instance, the fragmentation of media has led to the rise of audience silos. Now, truth is fungible, you get to pick your news, and you don’t have to be subjected to any other view if you so choose. 

I maintain that you have a societal obligation to change with the times. It’s a tall order. Here are 7 tips to help you survive the new media landscape:

1.     Be your own editor and use multiple news sources.

2.     Question what you’re seeing, hearing and reading.

3.     Online, be sure to click on every platform’s “About” tab to get a sense of who they are and where their money comes from.

4.     Look for transparency, and whether hidden agendas are being masked.

5.     Be on guard against your own confirmation bias; be honest, you are the easiest person for you to fool; be able to identify your source’s biases.

6.     Be aware of a rapidly changing media landscape from print to Tik Tok.

7.     It’s the Wild West out there; the environment is unsettled and rife with crooks, grifters, and crackpots, so take nothing for granted.

If you are into self-delusion, think Elvis is still alive, and that everything’s all right, ask yourself these questions:

·       Would George Wallace have been more than a fringe candidate in 1968 if today’s array of rightwing media outlets existed then?

·       Would Republican Senators have forced Nixon to resign in 1972 with Fox News and myriad right wing platforms denying his criminality for the sake of party over country? 

·       How badly does the lack of an agreed upon set of facts damage our democracy?

·       If we’re not beyond repair, what can we do? (I’ll answer that less-rhetorical question: use the 7 media survival tactics listed above.)

The co-director of the Center for Sustainable Democracy at Arizona State, Thom Reilly, notes that 70% of Republican voters think the 2020 election was fraudulent, and that Joe Biden is not the legitimate president. Just where do you think they got that idea? Perhaps from a chronically grievous ex-president whose ego can’t accept the defeat he knows he suffered. How much damage has his self-serving messaging done? ASU’s Riley says, “Widespread misinformation and disinformation on election administration is hobbling the ability of election officials to do their job and has created fertile ground for mistrust.”

CBS Sunday Morning had a short feature recently that highlighted the fact that only outrage generates cash, and no one is more outrageous than rightwing pundits online and on the air. It may be short, cynical, and incomplete, but its thrust is true.  

Some, like pundit Zeynep Tufekci, are calling it the “historic transformation of the public sphere,” she writes, “I focus on the Alex Jones trial and verdict, but my question is about the future: what can we do, what should we do, to prevent future cases?” The problem here is driven less by ideology than by profit. In the case of Alex Jones, it’s his bluster and passion that sells hundreds of millions of dollars of unsanctioned supplements, a huge array of survivalist gear, and fluoride-free toothpaste. His anger and passion for self-derived conspiracies is attractive to many who can’t wait to buy his line and his products, which he hocks like a rabid Fuller Brush man.

It's easy to imagine a time in the very recent past when societal stewards, who used to stand together against conspiracy theories and hate in general, would have taken an ogre like Jones to task, demanding he acknowledge a simple truth: Sandy Hook Elementary was attacked, and many were killed. But the fragmentation of media has diluted the impact of our rational stewards; anybody who doesn’t want to hear them won’t, because they’ll be in their own silo where, in this instance, the government is coming for your guns (so stock up on my full line of military-style products), and keep yourself strong (by consuming my snake-oil potions and supplements).

©2022 Jon Sinton