Thread by @dutaut

I’ve been thinking about Trump’s accusation that CNN is #FakeNews. Clearly propaganda against a critical media outlet, yet CNN bears some responsibility. They created the 24-hour news cycle. It was only 6 years old when I moved to the US, aged 9. I remember being hooked by it.

It’s a big world out there, and if you’re inclined, you can fill a 24-hour news channel a hundred times over with new and original content.
Provided you can get enough journalists. And enough revenue.

In theory, the growth of a competitive market should have delivered that. A hundred channels of varied and original journalism and documentary content from around the globe. All outdoing each other to get the best journos onto the best stories.

But that’s not what happened. These are commercial channels. Why pay a journalist when you can get an informed expert in the studio? The bottom line dictates not getting off your bottom, but bringing people to you who’ll talk for free because they’re passionate about a subject.

And from that point, it all becomes about getting the most passionate speakers, regardless of expertise.
Slowly, an audience who tuned in to be informed has transformed into one that tunes in to be entertained.
But crucially, they don’t realise it. They still believe it’s info.

But less and less journalism happens. Competition means whatever your competitor is talking about, you also need to talk about.
The spectrum of issues gets restricted to a sort of 5-a-day headline diet.
The same people tour the studios.
All the cameras are in the same places.

Now, the only ways to differentiate your channel are your anchorman’s face and your editorial line.
But because you’re still maintaining a pretence that this is news journalism, the range of editorial lines is limited.
So all you’ve got is your anchorman’s way-too-polished face.

And that’s the market primed for disruption. In come Murdoch and Fox. They get blamed for jettisoning balance and moderation, and they did, but journalism had gone out the top floor window of corporate America’s high-rises before they came along. News is unadulterated product.

So you’ve now got to fill 24 hours of content but you can only talk about five things and it’s got to get ratings. You’ve given up on expertise and you’ll have anyone with an opinion come in so long as they are passionate. And your audience has followed you every step of the way.

But new audiences, there are none. Younger generations give no credence to the pretence of journalism associated with your brands. Anyone critical by now can see that the only journalism happening is when a whistleblower leaks.

Fawn-piece interviews. Fake news. Undigested press releases. Fake news. Poorly understood science. Fake news. Breaking stories. Days of guessing what’s next. Fake news.
A race for ratings at the least expense.
Free market news. Fake news.

Along comes a president who feeds you fake news, and you no longer have the capacity to tell it apart from your usual content.
He gets ratings. He gives you them for free. He tells you he’s going to cut you out, and it makes no difference. Your ratings are assured by outrage.

The younger audiences ran to the internet years ago. They sense a dying medium.
And who’s there to pick them up? People with even less commitment to journalism than you.
People who can mimic your conventions.
People who make their names and fortunes by being anti-you.

But they’re not anti-you.
They’re more you than you. They’re your long dark shadow.
And journalism dies. Journalists die. It becomes more and more common to see them shot at and killed, assaulted and insulted.
Why? You threw them to the dogs. Facebook. Twitter. YouTube.

Companies far worse than CNN or Fox. They haven’t liberated journalism. They parade as libertarian content platforms and take no responsibility for their role as media companies.
All news is now content.
All journalists are now free agents and all news is fake.

Back-pedal all you like with your fact-checks and new-found respect for moderate, considered critique, it’s too late. You’re only doing it now to satisfy your audience. It can have no standing as truth in the relative world your market ushered in. I’m looking at you, Ted Turner.

No, the only thing that can have standing as truth now is power. Relativism doesn’t last.
24-hour news channels could have been transformative, educational.
Instead, they became an insidious machine working against democracy in the name of profit, primed for exploitation.

CNN destroyed the Fourth Estate and it’s taking democracy down with it. We’re left praying the US constitution is strong enough to rescue it and itself, and that enough whistleblowers and citizen journalists show up to help it because this collapse is a global as Lehman Brothers.

Whether it does or doesn’t, powerful democratic journalism must surely make a come-back in another place or another time. Its model must be based on something other than creating content as filler around expensive advertising space. Fake news is cheap. Truth is priceless.

In the meantime, if you’ve bothered to read this far, no news is good news. Switch it off. Silence it. Try not to comment and feed the beast. Make your own news. Get engaged locally. Truth is what enough of us working together co-create.

I struggle with it, but I stopped consuming mainstream news and it was a mental health boon. I’ve recently fallen into the trap of listening on my commute and I feel a difference in myself. Not a good one.

Tomorrow, I go back to audiobooks. There’s more truth there.

Goodnight.

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