Take a Trump is a victim stance.
Conflate that with politics.
Use a square black and white meme.
Dont look up who authored a quote.
Lie that he was the prototypical journalist. (He was a journalist at a local paper. Local papers were mostly ad and gossip rags for the benefit of local business communities. (With a few notable exceptions))
Make this thread about how the media should be more grateful to Trump for bringing them closer to the edge of inexistance. (Riling up public opinion against journalism.)
Spew something about truth mattering in the process.
If you know nothing, and you feel something, better resort to post memes, right?
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Here are a few concepts you could look at.
- Yellow press model as fashioned by Rupert Murdoch
Relies on the lowest common denominator, is out there to entertain, exploit human attention mechanisms and sell.
- Click bait journalism model, best (imho) described by Ryan Holiday (Trust Me, I'm Lying)
Relies on the lowest common denominator, is out there to exploit human attention mechanisms and sell.
- TV broadcast journalism model
Based on finding a good image - relying on news paper journalism for the rest.
- News paper journalism, now with 10x the actuality pressure and -80% of staff. And minus 80% of a cut of total advertising budgets. Those where the guys that formerly had larger editorial staff quotas, and actually people going after stories.
- News wires, not at all financed through ad money.
- Social media - not journalism at all - but claiming to be a great broker of stuff you'd love to see. Nowadays gets more than 2/3s of all online ad revenues.
- Influencer with podcast - joke, sellout (if not at first, eventually (simply because its hard to keep quality constant int the environment they are in, as a one person chop shop - and the ad economy as implemented by facebook and google favors SENSATIONALISM!)
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So what do you want to talk about? How Trump was essential in pointing out a problem, or the deviancy of the journalistic class?
Both of those are lies.
If you want to point out that journalistic institution models (f.e. billionaire owned) also influence what is written or shown. Yes, not in the direct way you'd think, but more with company culture, and selection biases in recruitment. The only way around that is to have a healthy ecosystem - where multiple outlets can compete.
Since the public - even before Trump decided it would be a boon not to pay for journalism anymore - and googles and facebooks 'first person that posts a story gets most eyes' mantra increased speed to the point, where as a journalist - doing journalism is now the least part of your job - you now can reap the benefits of having done everything to destroy public value in that sector.
Ways around this.
- Publicly co-funded mass outlets like NPR, or the BBC
- Research collectives (research now only pays if several outlets pool journalism on bigger projects)
- Billionaire owners, who have the paper write nothing bad about them and their interests, but at least can finance bigger editorial offices - constantly loosing money, without having to necessarily reduce quality. (Not quite philanthropy, but close)
- Prescription only models, for certain journalists who fashion themselves experts in a field (more paid stock market advice than anything else).
Every other form, doesnt seem to work. (Well, the Guardian made it work recently, as one open/prescrition and ad financed liberal outlet. One, for the entire english speaking market. They did it by resorting heavily to clickbait stories, and 'frames' that people liked. Only cut back part of their staff. The issue here is, that this is one of the most famous english speaking newspapers in the world. If that 'just' scales using the old model - goodbye everyone else..
)
To get anything close to 'constant quality' you need a bunch of people at the same outlet, following something like an ethos.
This still gives you biases, the same way as a billionaire owner will, but if interests (who sponsers a paper) arent uniform (which they arent, when there are many bigger news outlets around), it also gives you some diversity.
If you have one to five dudes, working under youtube style advertiser criteria, and google style 'it only pays to be first' pressures, you get anything but journalism. Bloggers suck at this. (More interested in brand creation and maintaining, than research.)
At the same time - Trump maybe knows two and a half political concepts, and is mostly employed to do the same he did as a spokesperson for the Trump brand, which was owned by banks for quite some while now. He promotes ventures and businesses. The end. He doesnt know jack. He lies. But he also entertains. And if he's not pulling any political strings - the country can be run around him, with him playing some sort of symbolic leader figure that no one in business really cares about. First he sets of an economic battle with china, then he relaxes it. Horray. First he promises for factory jobs to return from china and mexico, then he realizes, that they have already been automated away. Horray. Something, something wall. Fake Media. Horray.
The biggest part of all of it is open far right propaganda. Which goes like this.
- we are relatively new as a political fraction.
- we are relatively extreme in our believes.
Therefore mainstream media isn't covering us yet. (Changes once you get a little more established).
- we have our own payed off website outlets (think 'union press', so media outlets that are owned by the same people paying for most of the parties activities).
We have great idea - we make up highly emotionally catching fear based stories, and tell people mainstream media is withholding that information from them because - they be peddling fake news.
New coined term explodes in usage. (For example during the european migration crisis. Where societal practices prevented early adequate reporting. (noone wanting to be declared a racist or hurting state interests - public felt in larger groups that reality wasnt reported anymore. Media has to make the term 'their own' because everybody and their uncle is using it. While shouting at them.)
Also - there is really only one political opinion that is spread by most people on gbatemp, and that is 'how unfair is it, that something Trump - I heard about it in this meme *posts meme*'.
Which is no political opinion at all.
Also what Trump does, doesnt matter at all, what he thinks, far, far less so.
American economy is certainly not doing well because of what he did, but despite of it.
(If you want to know why - his administration basically gave tax exemptions to the ultra rich, which then didnt manifest itself in increased investments in the US (or the west), the economy is still mostly consumption driven (no new business sectors - just increase consumption spending and tell people that they don't need any money for a house, for old age - thats also growth baby!), which only has limited pull - and everybody still is very excited that some stock market indicators went to new highs (which is where tax breaks went - too much money in the economy, too few investment opportunities for it that would produce real world economic growth, in western economies)). There is a feeling of 'sustained progress' though ('best year ever' in some indicator that means nothing to the average person), that makes everybody kind of happy.)
So what do you want to talk about? That facebook isn't journalism? Yes, and?
Sasha Baron Cohan did a rant on a concept similar to yours recently ( h**ps://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymaWq5yZIYM ). People basically realize, that the gatekeeper function of conventional media is gone ("pointing out - what matters"), and are utterly confused and angry that common ground was replaced by a multitude of opinion bubbles.
(This issue:
)
At the same time they still complain as if "tha media" would still work their old function, and would be the only thing, that hold away their political godking from being accepted, as a universal god like entity. Now that can only be explained, by them eating political propaganda by the spoonfull.
"Tha media" can not both simultaneously fail economically, loose all gatekeeper functions, and still be the untrustworthy "kingmaker".
Also journalism was always a for profit entity. Which means at least from the perspective of the owners, it never was 'first and foremost about the truth'. For journalists - it still always at least partly was. (It was also about getting special access, and not loosing it ('exclusive interview'), and about international networks, partly political, and it was about at least cooperating with the state, if you got larger - to a certain agree - but at least journalism on its own had some power. (The entire mass media concept resolves around 'engineering consent', creating a common narrative). And was paid for by the reader, so that was who you 'worked for' ideally. Now - much less so.
Journalism working to 'report the truth' maybe was more of a market economy effect. If your paper reported untrue stuff it could be berated and one upped by your competitors, so everyone had an incentive to report 'truly' (ethos formed) as much as not to get called out by competitors. Journalists having a self image as 'facilitators of the truth' (pillar of society) actually was a working side effect for quite some time. Now in the internet age where everyone gets a voice and the means of production, and distribution is handed out by facebook by popularity - that pretty much broke. And if that hadn't done it - more economic pressures on journalists certainly did.
In the end this means higher market concentration (only a few big papers remaining that 'do' journalism). Which is not ideal. While the general public doesnt think about paying for journalism anymore. And would rather click puppy videos on that insta. (Attention economy - its not as if they'd be bored otherwise - the illusion to be informed for watercooler talk is more than enough or most people.) That function facebook caters to sufficiently. That can be done by some algo - no human needed. That function (commentary) could also be served by some podcaster or radio shock jock. (You dont need journalism for that.)
Also in the past you had maybe 4-10 ideologies that made up the public narrative for the majority. Now every small small societal entity finds itself on the internet and makes up their own bubble. You cant reflect all of those. Even if all of them think themselves very important. Then selection mostly goes by followercount (popularity) which never is a good indicator for anything - much less something you'd call truth.
This means "lowest common denominator" - becomes more and more of an ideal image society wide.
Everything now sounds like a commercial as well, because every company, every small project, every product campaign and every human being, wants to 'optimize' their messaging, and reach a lot of people. Which you theoretically can. This leans into social media giants being marketing companies at their heart and in their finance models.
So what of that does fake news cover now exactly?
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