New media 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Like the Washington Post says, "It's a grim time to be a member of the news media." Read that as, "old media." TV and newspapers may say that they investigate, that they do fact-checking, but most of us have found their claims of truthful neutrality unconvincing.

Yes, most of us. According to this recent Gallup Poll, 69% of Americans have little or no trust in the old mass media.

"Old media" tells us that social media is unreliable and X (Twitter) is failing, but as of last August X users had grown 22% over the previous year. In a Pew Research report, 54% of U.S. adults get news from social media often or sometimes (image).

Elon Musk says, "You are the new media."

New media

Legacy media is in decline (see Jeff Bezos' opinion about his Washington Post). Since the election on November 5, both MSNBC and CNN have lost about half their audience. Newspapers in general speak to only half of the audience they had back in 2000.

Newsweek says "traditional media's institutional collapse" came from "a growing sense among Americans that the media cannot be trusted to tell them the news they believe is fair," plus a failing business model.

It's not just one side of the political landscape which doesn't trust big media. "It actually transcends party," says one pollster. "Young people in particular are very distrusting of the media."

So where do people, especially young people, go for their news? Podcasts are popular. Joe Rogan's conversation with the president-elect had 40 million views. And what does Joe say? "X is the most reliable and most popular news source in the world."

 

from Newsweek 

(cont'd tomorrow)