> None of the students — even in an elective course about media — confessed any interest in becoming a journalist. A few could name news organizations they trusted but others said the news came to them through social media or what friends shared or what they overheard as their parents were watching television.
> A little less than half (45%) of teens said journalists do more to harm democracy than to protect it.
These kids? Extreme and reflexive distrust of institutions is as harmful as the opposite. People have been trained to distrust institutions because that makes them manipulable by even worse actors.
All true, however almost all of the students respond with interest in becoming influencers (don’t have the survey on hand, it’s been done a few times). And influencers include the TikTok age equivalent of journalists. For better and (definitely) for worse. Some of them are functionally the same, many are far far worse.
The kids just don’t have any interest in big news organizations which is understandable even if it’s going to make things worse.
I am not young, but I have never seen a major institution (including governments) caring about citizens in aggregate in my lifetime. To me, this is an artifact of the 50s or 60s, some bygone era (which is funny, because the government did not care about citizens in aggregate back then either).
I can only imagine how the younger kids see things. They're bombarded by public knowledge of nasty things institutions did in the bigoted/ignorant past, underhanded things they're definitely doing now, an anger/fear inducing news cycle and endless social media conspiracy theories (some of which end up being true) engineered for clicks. Extreme cynicism is a logical conclusion.
Precisely this. The idea of trusting that a news corporation (or any other corporation) cares about you is just utterly absurd in 2025. We all know now, and have for some time, that, factually, this is not how things work, and profit (or funding) has to come first, or the corporation does not survive. It isn't even cynicism, just a recognition of the economic realities of contemporary society.
This is just cynical brain poisoning. My health insurance company isn't a person who cares about me, but that was never the deal. Their interests are aligned with mine. I'm in a blue state and can get the covid vaccine for free despite the federal level fuckery. That is because my insurer cares about profit, which means they act on the science of it without the culture wars and demagoguery. They know I'll be net healthier with the vaccine, therefore more profitable to them.
> They know I'll be net healthier with the vaccine, therefore more profitable to them.
How do you square this with the fact that in the US the same profit-minded insurance company is limited to a fixed profit margin based on the amount of claims paid? By law, they need to set their rates such that they pay out at least 80% (or 85% for some markets) of the premiums they collect. Practically the only way for them to make more money in the long term is to pay out more in the short term.
Personally, I'm not sure how to answer this question. Over time, insurance companies benefit more when medical costs for their customers are higher, not when they are lower. Maybe it's that they actually think that keeping you alive and paying premiums longer is better for their bottom line than having you die quickly? But I don't think it's as simple as thinking that they benefit more if you don't get sick.
There is no cynicism or brain poisoning here, health insurance is in no way comparable to news. The economic incentives for news media putting the truth first are simply not there. They can't tell blatant, obvious lies too often, yes, or they will lose trust and thus profit, but nothing really prevents them from lying by omission, and if, e.g., fear mongering, clickbait, and pandering leads to more profits, this is where they must and will go.
If people demanded truth, we might see a different story, but it is clear that enough people want other things more, often enough.
> Extreme and reflexive distrust of institutions is as harmful as the opposite.
Which means that the institutions should do a lot better, which they don't. The demos is always right, that's why we live in a democracy (or at least we strive to) and not in a technocracy (where, presumably, the institutions are right by default).
Yes, most of the issues in journalism come from extremely low diversity of thought.
I laugh when I occasionally listen to NPR and within a few minutes hear an absurdly framed commentary that clearly hasn’t steel manned alternative viewpoints.
>Yes, most of the issues in journalism come from extremely low diversity of thought.
Journalism runs on the same "expensive degree -> unpaid intern -> low pay jobs -> stick it out long enough you'll do alright selling your influence" model as Hollywood and DC. Hence it has the same people problems.
Bullshit. The demos is so goddamn stupid it can't be helped, it must be led. Explaining things to them does nothing. People will sacrifice freedom for convenience and short term profit every single time. They vote with emotions. They make decisions that impact entire nations without even trying to gain even a superficial understanding of things. The demos is completely responsible for the horrible status quo. Their ignorance and passivity is exactly what leads to their oppression. Trying to help them leads to nothing but pointless martyrdom. Nothing changes because change depends on them and they are unwilling.
> not in a technocracy
We're literally in the technofeudalist era. We have trillion dollar corporations running digital fiefdoms with users as the serfs tilling the artificially scarce fields. They have so much money it's unreal, and they have woken up to the wonders of lobbying.
The institutions they distrust are controlled by bad actors. How is it good to trust sources of propaganda and lies? Yes, there’s worse stuff out there. There’s also far better.
No there isn't. There are individual sources that are better, but there isn't any group that's better. There are individual podcasters that are better than mainstream media as a group, but popular podcasters as a group are far more manipulative than mainstream media. And you could say the same for any social site, or any other group such as politicians or religious figures or ...
> No there isn't. There are individual sources that are better
You immediately contradict yourself here. My impression is that anyone intelligent and informed under, say, about 40 or so only trusts particular individuals, whether they are podcasters, bloggers, substackers, or particular journalists active on e.g. Twitter or whatever other social media platform.
> but popular podcasters as a group are far more manipulative than mainstream media
This is false logic, because no one follows the entire group, they only follow individuals. It remains to be seen whether this is more pernicious than mainstream media, but I heavily suspect it will not be, as it is easier for mainstream media to be controlled than it is to control every single individual that can say something without the support of some controlled mega-conglomerate. (Though obviously de-platforming could easily render this the same, eventually).
This is not true at all, bubbling is entirely a function of the diversity of the sources, and new media has far less diversity than the diversity that exists among small sources.
It is far easier for an individual to abuse trust than it is for a group. I don't think those "intelligent and informed" people are as intelligent and informed as you think they are.
No one follows a single individual, that is the point though. A collection of individuals not united by a corporation (e.g. social media) a priori is less controllable than a collection of individuals controlled by a corporation (e.g. news media). I think there is far more diverse information available today than there was in the days where all news was from corporations, and it remains to be seen whether this results in more bias or not. My money is on less bias though.
Either you're trusting a large number of individuals and therefore haven't done proper vetting, or you're trusting a small number of individuals and are vulnerable.
I was very upset when I found out how the NYT was manipulated to shill for the Iraq war.
I was also very upset when one of the bloggers I followed went crazy slowly and it took too long for me to notice. I also had another I trusted who turned out to be a biased corporate shill.
I don't trust the NYT, but I trust the process of their checks and balances in their organization and the presence of inside whistle blowers more than I do any individual blogger.
> Either you're trusting a large number of individuals and therefore haven't done proper vetting, or you're trusting a small number of individuals and are vulnerable.
I don't think this is right at all.
A corporation (or organization) I know must necessarily put profit (or funding) first, before truth, if it wishes to survive for any duration. Ultimately, I know there is no real possibility for them to ever care about truth first. I can't vet a corporation, because the people controlling it are individuals who remain mysterious and inaccessible, or it is controlled by complex financial ties which are generally inscrutable. However, with how intermeshed things are, I can generally have faith that the financial and political pressures on large organizations will be more homogeneous than those on a collection of individuals not under the thumb of such an organization. Corporations and groups often don't even have a clear "personality" which one can make judgements on. You can notice a blogger going slowly crazy more easily than you can notice a large group being slowly corrupted by hidden influences.
By contrast, weird autists that seem to actually care about the truth can in fact be found blogging or on other forms of social media. They too have their biases, but, collectively, their biases seem to me to be far more diverse than the biases of large groups, and, in many cases, you do have reason to believe these people actually care about the truth.
It is, in my opinion, far, far better to follow a small number of weird autists than to trust a few large news corporations. Also, the wierd autists will tend to talk about what the news corporations are saying often anyway, whereas the reverse is not true.
I think that since a key part of your trust of the NYT involves whistle blowers, that this contradicts your basic position as well.
EDIT: To be clear though, I do think there is still a lot of value in news organizations. This whole dichotomy of "which should I trust more" is silly, since both have their advantages. I do hope news media sticks around and remains something that is somewhat trusted sometimes, and that people do like what I presume you and I do, relying on a mix of news media and particular individuals. Insofar as now that news media is no longer the only game in town, some decline in trust is warranted as the trust re-distributes somewhat, but I definitely hope that trust of the news media doesn't go to zero.
> You can notice a blogger going slowly crazy more easily than you can notice a large group being slowly corrupted by hidden influences.
The former is a very private affair totally hidden. The latter is something happening between a large group of people, many of whom are very inclined to quit the anonymity of the large organization, write a book about it to become individually famous.
A significant number of those autists you espouse can be bribed by surprisingly small amounts. Politicians are far more vetted than bloggers, and yet a significant number of them have been caught changing their votes for $2000 or similar amounts.
You might be able to sway a NYT reporter for a similar amount, but they have processes to catch that.
Bribes are one thing, but individuals operate independently and may post unpredictably on certain topics. Their posts don't have to be "cleared" by higher ups. They can be harder to suppress precisely because of this. I don't rely on people whistle-blowing, because that means risking a job or even career. How many stories are quietly squashed that no whistle-blower ever revealed? We'll never know. This is IMO far more hidden than the "private" affair of a blogger going crazy.
My bet is that news media organizations are easier to control than it is to control a bunch of unpredictable, independently operating individuals (though it is far easier to control a single individual, no doubt).
I am worried about things like deciding on a narrative at the corporate level. E.g. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/1643786/new-york-..., or, say, CDC and news outlets flip-flopping on things like mask mandates / COVID lab leak and the like. Whenever large-scale incentives are involved, I do not trust news media, and especially think that what individual bloggers and other people are saying will give you a better perspective on things. Whereas when there aren't clear incentives in any direction, or when one requires a reporter "on the ground", there can be good reason to trust news media over individuals.
News media are also broadly incompetent when it comes to reporting on areas where expertise is required (e.g. tech, science), and there, specific individuals again are far, far more trustworthy. Heck, most news media is too lazy to even cite much of anything they say. As I said, this isn't an either/or thing, but for sure trust in news media should decline as people recognize the areas where other sources are more trustworthy.
> A little less than half (45%) of teens said journalists do more to harm democracy than to protect it.
These kids? Extreme and reflexive distrust of institutions is as harmful as the opposite. People have been trained to distrust institutions because that makes them manipulable by even worse actors.