I’m looking into ways of expanding I Might Be Wrong. It will definitely include a podcast (soon!), and I’m trying to figure out what else people like. For example: I write about soccer — should I add another sport that’s unpopular in my country? Jai alai, maybe, or caber toss? Or what about formats? I Might Be Wrong is currently a newsletter, but what if it was — stick with me here — a yogurt? Or a mutual fund? Or one of those suitcases that you ride through the airport? I’m spitballing.
One thing I’ve considered is a YouTube show. Apparently, The Kids watch political shows on the You Tubes. I didn’t know this, which isn’t surprising since I’ve missed every youth trend since Gangnam Style, which I found out about a month ago. But political YouTube shows are a major thing; they’re part of the realignment of news media that includes podcasts, social media, and even the newsletter (and possibly chewing tobacco?) that you’re reading right now.
I checked out some popular political YouTube shows to see what they’re all about. Let me phrase this as diplomatically as I can: If you filled the Great Lakes with diarrhea and lighter fluid, set the whole thing ablaze, and catapulted yourself into the middle of that fiery shit-fest, you would probably have a more pleasant experience than you would have watching a typical political YouTube show. Most of them aren’t just “makes me cry for humanity” bad — they’re “makes me think ‘fuck humanity, they deserve what they get’” bad.1
Ironically, one opinion that most YouTube shows seem to share is that the mainstream media is terrible. Specifically, they see the media as irredeemably corrupted by money. Now: I have my issues with the mainstream media.2 I’ve had to reluctantly admit that I’ve been “Mary Jane’s Last Dance”-ing it with the New York Times and Washington Post for years, refusing to admit that they’re not what they used to be. Other news sources I used to rely on just aren’t very good anymore. Those problems remain. But I find the “we’re not corrupted!” narrative that’s common in “alternative” media like Substack newsletters and YouTube shows so hilariously backwards that it seems worth addressing.
Take Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar…PLEASE! This YouTube show and podcast by two mainstream media castoffs (both previously worked for The Hill and Krystal was once at MSNBC) made waves when its debut gave them a bigger audience than more established shows like The Daily and Pod Save America. Krystal and Saagar offer a left-ish/right-ish perspective that’s difficult to pin down but is always heavily populist. In their debut episode, Saagar explained their raison d'être this way:
“What are we doing here? We want to make people hate each other less and hate the ruling class more.”
Oh my fucking God. That’s such a balls-out lie that I wonder if Saagar literally exposed his testicles beneath the desk while he said it. “Make people hate each other less” — it’s as if I had said: “My goal is to do political comedy that doesn’t depend heavily on photoshopped graphics and Big Lebowski quotes.” Most of what Krystal and Saagar do is spit venom at their enemies. And, yes, their enemies tend to be powerful, but anyone who doesn’t realize how spinning an endless web of cynicism and conspiratorial thinking can have dire real-world consequences doesn’t know much about history. And I don’t even mean ancient history; I mean this country, ten months ago.
The media is one of Krystal and Saagar’s most common targets. 24 out of 30 days of programming going back through the beginning of August contain at least one segment about the media. The narrative is this: Mainstream media outlets like The New York Times, Washington Post, and all cable TV networks are in the pocket of the ruling class and represent their interests. The “corporate media” — whose parameters are never quite defined — backs the views of corporations (obviously), the military, Republicans, Democrats (yes, Republicans and Democrats), and other “capitalistic” enterprises.
Obviously, this is complicated, because mainstream media outlets do have biases and make mistakes. If the media was SNL, they’re arguably in their Melanie Hutsell/Jay Mohr era. I’ve written about that, as have many people who know a lot more about media trends than I do. I’m not here to defend the mainstream media. But I am here to say that media criticism should at least make logical sense, and that the populist critique is completely backwards.
Let’s think back to the Ron Burgundy/Sterling Cooper era of media. In those days, a large chunk of media revenue revenue came from ads, and comparatively little came from subscriptions.3 This resulted in headlines like “Kennedy Averts Crisis in Cuba, Unwinds with Smooth Taste of Chesterfield Cigarettes”.
At least, that’s the cynical view. Others would argue that the “church and state” wall — the separation between the business and news operations — kept corporate influence at bay. There are plenty of stories of grizzled Old Media types giving the finger to their corporate bosses. In fact, a staple of every B-minus newsroom drama between 1970 and 2000 is the stodgy corporate boss saying “you can’t print that!”, but the intrepid reporter — played by an actor far too good-looking to be an actual reporter — runs the story anyway.
Which narrative is true?4 I don’t know; I’m “references Tom Petty songs” old, not “thinks news went to shit when Edward R. Murrow retired” old. I do know that when I started working at Last Week Tonight in 2014, John was excited to do a story about GM that he felt couldn’t have aired on Comedy Central. I also know that the “sponsor death spiral” is a thing in TV — if you piss off too many sponsors, your days are numbered. So, while I’m willing to believe that news folks may have been able to keep corporate interests at bay in the regional monopoly/three network days, I’m also inclined to believe that corporate influence is real.
But the trend in media is decidedly away from ad revenue and towards revenue from readers. That is: Monied interests are losing influence. The smart critique of the New York Times is that they’ve changed their business model to prioritize subscriptions and engagement. This has pushed them towards sensationalism and caused them pander to their readers’ views. Or so goes the story.
I’m very inclined to believe this story. It’s consistent with my own experiences working in media, and it explains the biases that I seem to notice (do people really feel that the mainstream media is too nice to powerful tech companies?). The argument is essentially that the wall between business operations and news operations has been obliterated, and that news organizations are chasing eyeballs and clicks by promoting narratives their audience likes and discarding ones their audience doesn’t.
Once again: I feel that this is a valid critique of much of the mainstream media. But this is not the populist critique. The populist critique is that the media are ignoring what people want out of deference to some ruling class agenda. This story lionizes the independent sources you find on Substack and YouTube — it says “the behemoths can’t be trusted, but we’re independent!”
But this narrative omits the fact independent sources face our own set of financial incentives. To be perfectly clear about those incentives: We will say whatever you fuckers (whoops, I meant to say “valued readers”) want us to say. I’ve written about this before; we are completely at your mercy. You want stories about how Four Loko and Pop Rocks can cure Covid? You got it. What about some self-help shit that says the key to happiness is eating a big thing of Twizzlers on the couch? No sweat. Or maybe you’d like an article that tries to connect every pop culture thing in the news at once, like "How The Many Saints of Newark Shows Why Britney Spears Should Be the New Host of Jeopardy!” Done and done, friend!
Of course, there are benefits to independence. Matt Yglesias recently tweeted this:
That’s true. Of course, it’s true that he can run that piece, because he’s spent 20 years building a brand in which a 3,000 piece about electoral systems is the equivalent of Lynyrd Skynyrd playing “Freebird”. And I’m fortunate that a large chunk of my dull, dull readers come from him. But for most people on Substack, that piece would be met with a silence known only to the dead. If you’re trying to build an audience, you won’t succeed by writing about electoral systems! You need to be confrontational — you need to pick one group that’s responsible for all the world’s problems and then keep flogging that horse until it’s nothing but a pile of bones! You know…journalism!
Let’s remember the main thing that we know about social media: Outrage sells. We hear this over and over and over again. The connection between outrage and social media virality is as well-established as the connection between growing up in the ‘80s and having nightmares about Slim Goodbody: There can be no doubt that the first thing causes the second.
It would be naïve to think that media that comes from independent sources is less prone to tribalism and invective. Just this week, the Wall Street Journal exposed a tweak Facebook made to its algorithm in 2018 that prioritized person-to-person interactions (as opposed to interactions with professionally-produced content). The rhetoric surrounding the decision was borderline utopian: The change would prioritize “meaningful social interactions” to “strengthen bonds between users and to improve their well-being,” which would “[help] them interact more with friends and family.” Sounds lovely! And all you needed to do to think it would work was to forget basically every interaction you’ve ever had with your friends and family!
So, what happened? The change boosted the virality of the most hateful, divisive content the platform has to offer. Because of course it did; the idea that people would be cooperative and kind if only they were free from corrupting influence is a bunch of dumb hippie bullshit (suck it, Rousseau!). From the Journal:
[The change] was making Facebook’s platform an angrier place. Company researchers discovered that publishers and political parties were reorienting their posts toward outrage and sensationalism.
The new algorithm’s heavy weighting of reshared material in its News Feed made the angry voices louder. “Misinformation, toxicity, and violent content are inordinately prevalent among reshares,” researchers noted in internal memos.
The independent media model isn’t a panacea for influence-free content. Financial incentives still very much exist, and they exist in the direction of producing inflammatory content with the potential to go viral. Many of the problems with mainstream media relate to the ways that they’re replicating the give-the-people-what-they-want model. To wit, the Times’ missive to enhance “reader engagement” sounds a lot like Facebook’s push for more “meaningful social interactions”.
So, what’s the solution? Well, obviously: This Substack is the solution. When I said that independent media producers have incentives to pander to their readers, I meant other people, not me. This will always be the one newsletter — and possibly newsletter-slash-anti-vaginal-itch-cream — you can trust.
Beyond that, anything that bolsters an ethic of journalistic objectivity and integrity that can push back against distortionary incentives — wherever they may come from — seems like a good idea. And yes, I’m fully aware that objectivity is racist now. But hey: What isn’t?
I don’t spend a lot of time trying to figure out whether the radical democratization of publishing that we’ve seen in the past few decades or good or bad. All I know is that it’s happening, and that none of us can stop it. This column was about content that I compared to five enormous glacial lakes filled to the brim with flaming diarrhea, but these platforms also host some really great stuff! It is — like so many things are — a mixed bag. But nobody should be selling, and nobody should be buying, this ridiculous “independent media is free from corrupting incentives” bullshit.
***Poll for Tuesday***
I'd like the next column to be about...
1. The reconciliation bill! Reconciliation, reconciliation, reconciliation! I LOVE discussing this bill and will be sorry when it's gone! [VOTE FOR THIS]
2. Where are we, exactly, with carbon capture technology? [VOTE FOR THIS]
3. Why do talented people sometimes make absolute garbage? [VOTE FOR THIS]
4. Is FACEBOOK the problem, or is SOCIAL MEDIA -- regardless of which company is dominant -- the problem? [VOTE FOR THIS]
And a few are good. The one you enjoy is good.
I’m going say “mainstream media” throughout this article even though I really dislike that phrase. After all, the media is many organizations! Some of them suck, some are very good, and virtually ALL of them are a mix of quality and crap. But “mainstream media” works as shorthand for “media that’s not small-scale, self-published stuff”, so I’m using it here.
I’ve looked for hard data to back this up, but if that data exists, I can’t find it. At any rate: I have heard this story many times from many sources, and data from more recent times makes it clear that ad revenue for legacy media is dropping.
Also, anecdotal: Even in the early 2000s, the Washington Post cost a quarter. A QUARTER! Which sounds like something straight out of Newsies.
They can both be a little true.
Definitely LOLed multiple times at the first paragraph.
This reminds me a lot of college where a bunch of people read Chomsky and decided. “I will only get my news from Daily Kos and Howard Zinn. They’re not biased like the corporate media.” Which is both a misreading of Chomsky and some real motivated reasoning.