Luke Ford

Andrey Mir writes in this 2020 book:

* Fake news is an overhyped issue. The greatest harm caused by media is polarization, and the biggest issue is that polarization has become systemically embedded into both social media and the mass media. Polarization is not merely a side effect but a condition of their business success.

* Trumpism continued the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement but on a completely different demographic basis.
The grassroots activity of the digitized masses, having been enabled by social media, not only fueled alternative agendas but also returned the favor to social media by providing higher user engagement. User engagement is the fundamental factor of social media’s business. Thus, through the strive for user engagement, the business of social media happened to be tied to political polarization.

* advertisers and audiences have fled to better platforms, where content is free and far more attractive and ad delivery is cheaper and far more efficient. The classical business models of the news media, news retail and ad sales, have been shaken up so violently that it is hard now for the media to survive.
Ad revenue in the media has declined much faster than reader revenue. The media were therefore forced to switch to the reader revenue business model aimed to sell content. However, as content is free on the internet, it is hard to sell. People almost always already know the news before they come to news websites because they invariably start their daily media routine with newsfeeds on social media. Increasingly, therefore, if and when people turn to the news media, it is not to find news, but rather to validate already known news.
Thus, the reader revenue the news media now seek is not a payment for news; it is actually more a validation fee. The audience still agrees to pay for the validation of news within the accepted and sanctioned value system. After switching from ad revenue to reader revenue, the business of the media has mutated from news supply to news validation.

* The mass media business is desperately searching for appropriate pitches and formats for this last – resort business model amid the shrinking revenues. New forms of funding are tested, among which the most promising appears to be philanthropy funding and the membership model. Philanthropy funding, most often accumulated via foundations, assumes that the media outlet picks up a pressing social issue and pledges to cover it for a grant or continued funding from a foundation. This form of funding inevitably leads journalists to excessively focus on chosen triggering topics instead of covering a wider spectrum. Under this form of funding, the media surrender a part of their newsroom autonomy to foundations, which have their own understanding of what is important for society.
The membership model has married the motives of philanthropy funding with traditional subscription. Within the membership model, a media outlet defines a noble cause and offers the audience the opportunity to join the cause and support journalists through donations. However, such ‘noble causes’ always happen to be, in fact, the most potentially donatable causes. Eventually, the membership model has come to calling readers to pay not for news but for the public service of the media outlet, which has pledged to cover certain social issues or just cover news from a certain angle or within a certain value system.
The radical difference between traditional news retail and the membership model is that the payer is not a reader. The membership payers do not pay to get news for themselves (they already know the news), they pay for news to be delivered to others. The membership model leads the media to set a certain agenda and promote certain values, pitching for money from the most active part of the former audience – now the donating audience.
The validation fee and the membership model are similar in their impact on journalism. They require newsrooms to operate with values, not news. This slowly forces journalism to mutate into crowdfunded propaganda – postjournalism.

* During the time when the membership model was tested and its relative viability proved (the Guardian , De Correspondent and others between 2013 – 2016), social media empowered alternative agendas and boosted polarization insomuch as it caused the political shocks of Trump and Brexit. The philosophy behind reader revenue in the form of membership appeared to be in tune with the rise of politicization. The leading mainstream media, previously sticking to paywalls, started to promote the noble cause of democracy as a cause of journalism, to which the audience was invited to join.
The media has started pitching subscription as membership. The transactional offer of selling news has turned into philanthropy soliciting. The news media have started soliciting subscription as donation.
With this shift, subscribers gradually turn into two new categories of payers:
1) those who pay a validation fee for the news validation service of the media, and
2) the donating audience contracting the media to influence others.
Both types pay the news media not for news but rather for impact. They incentivize the news media to sell impact.

* Because the largest mainstream media outlets in the US, both liberal and conservative, performed incredibly well in commodifying Trump in the form of subscriptions solicited as donations to the cause, the rest of the media market has started moving in the same direction. The media are increasingly pitching their services as a noble cause in the hopes of attracting audience support in the form of donations or time spent.

* The media are incentivized to amplify and dramatize issues whose coverage is most likely to be paid for. Only news and opinions which help to solicit support and donations can pass editorial scrutiny.

* Not only do the media have to address ‘pressing social issues’, they must also support and amplify readers’ irritation and frustration with those issues. The more concerned people become, the more likely they will donate.

* Reliance on either ad revenue or reader revenue incites the media to paint two different and even opposite pictures of the world. The media relying on ad revenue makes the world look pleasant. The media relying on reader revenue makes the world look grim.

* The media based on the subscription – membership business model must push pressing political issues and therefore be polarizing. This is their survival mode. They will not extinguish social and political conflicts but rather fire them up.
The media system based on ad revenue manufactured consent. The media system based on soliciting the audience’s support manufactures anger. The ad – driven media produced happy customers. The reader – driven media produces angry citizens. The former served consumerism. The latter serves polarization.

* “Surrounding every technology are institutions whose organization – not to mention their reason for being – reflects the worldview promoted by the technology. Therefore, when an old technology is assaulted by a new one, institutions are threatened. When institutions are threatened, a culture finds itself in crisis.” (Neil Postman)

* any story is a tragedy, you just need to tell it honestly till the very end.

* Hundreds of thousands of today’s students have never even touched a newspaper.

* The most important of these factors [in the decline of newspapers] were:
1) The media lost its monopoly over agenda setting because the internet offered an alternative, crowdsourced mode of agenda – setting;
2) Audiences and advertisers migrated to better platforms that provided more efficient advertising; and
3) The competition for time spent with media has become extremely intense; new and newly arriving digital media are much more efficient at capturing users’ attention, leaving newspapers, and old media in general, with an ever – shrinking share of our daily time.

* At home, radio does not seem to be a medium of choice when the entire sensorium is not restrained by driving and is free to explore all the amazing digital seductions. The quarantine hit radio severely. However, not for long. The traffic has gradually been restored, and radio has had an opportunity to fully recover. It will be neither the pandemic not the internet that will kill radio. Its mortal threat will be the self – driving car.

* The pandemic changed the tactile habits of the masses. Millions joined the ranks of germophobes.

* Why have the media become so “obsessed with Trump”?
The quick answer was given by Les Moonves, the chairman of CBS , at the beginning of the presidential campaign in February 2016, when he said that, “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS . The money’s rolling in…. This is fun”.

* Trump’s deeds and tweets were not only highly attractive but also sold very well. The period since the 2016 election has been extremely successful for the leading American media. Because of the Trump bump, the New Yorker, the Atlantic and the Washington Post doubled or tripled their subscriptions in the first year of Trump’s presidency.

* Television benefited from the Trump bump as well. For CNN , 2016 was the most profitable year in the organization’s history. [26] Those shows and TV hosts that focused heavily on Trump received a ratings boost, among them Stephen Colbert, Rachel Maddow and Trevor Noah. [27] “Saturday Night Live” with Alec Baldwin as Trump increased its viewership 44% in the 2016 – 2017 season. [28] For political reporters, the daily White House press briefing has turned “into a career launching pad like it’s never been before.” As BuzzFeed News ’ Steven Perlberg put it, “It’s a good time to be a reporter covering Trump if you like money and going on TV”. [29]
Donald Trump made the mainstream American media great again. An old saying among reporters goes ‘If it bleeds, it leads.’ An appropriate contemporary version might be “If it’s Trump, it leads.” Columbia Journalism Review reported that even placing international stories in American outlets is getting harder – unless they directly involve Trump. [30]
The same goes for book publishing. In 2018, as noticed by Brian Stelter, [31] each book at the top of the New York Times best – seller list has had one thing in common: President Trump. Even children’s books fell to the Trump bump. Stephen Colbert’s children’s book Whose Boat Is This Boat? , which he made out of Trump’s post – Hurricane Florence comments, held №1 on the Amazon respective category for a while. [32]
The Trump bump also resulted in an admission surge [33] in journalism schools. [34] This fact additionally strengthened the illusion that the industry was on the ascent.

* Benton tried to analyze Los Angeles Times ’ marketing strategy to find an explanation for the disappointing numbers. But a glance at the table he posted suggests another answer for the metropolitan papers’ decline amid the New York Times and the Washington Post blossoming: too much local news, too little Trump.

* the liberal media profited from what they fought against [Trump].

* The commercial motives behind the media coverage of Trump remain unrevealed to the public. Meanwhile, such analysis allows the assumption that the mainstream media not only commodified public fears while profiting from them, but also created a new materiality for these fears to be reiterated, thereby increasing those fears and their profitability for the media, but in so doing set up a disastrous feedback loop for society.
Business stimuli for the media to cover Trump’s every move contributed to a media environment favorable to Trumpism. Meantime, the media themselves became more and more politicized and contributed to the surge of polarization in society. What used to be accepted as natural for Fox News became common for all the media, including those who had previously tried to display impartiality, a stance they abandoned to move to a political side. This happened literally over two – three years and in no small part because of business reasons.

* The first polarizing divide in media cuts through media platforms. It is commonly recognized that the right – wingers and conservatives are more active on the internet, leading the internet to be accused of being an instrument or amplifier of the right. It is also true that the right is less represented in traditional media, particularly with regard to the mainstream media, as those media are mainly controlled by people with social, educational and cultural backgrounds that do not favor right – wing views.
In a sense, the activity of the right on the internet is forced upon them – they are offset thereto. The internet provides opportunities they do not have in the traditional media. The idea that the internet as a medium is beneficial to the right specifically is a misconception: the internet and social media are beneficial to those who are underrepresented in the mainstream media.

* because the established media are burdened with regulations, affiliations and the risks of public backlashes, radicals, dissidents and other suppressed movements tend to seek out less pressurized spaces to vent their agendas.

* In the past, Fox News stood out for the nakedness of its partisanship and the purity of its ideology; now, both MSNBC and CNN are mirror versions of it, tailoring their programming to the demands of their Trump – loathing audiences.

* Journalism is inherently designed to sell news downward , to the end user – a reader. However, as it is an intrinsic part of a whole social context, journalism inevitably switches to selling agendas upwards , with some news traded downwards as a side business.
This gives us two ultimate ‘ideal’ models of the media business. Journalism is either paid from below by those who want to read news or paid from above by those who want others to read news.

* Business models and political pressure predefined the ways the two modes of journalism perceived the world. Serving its readers, commercial journalism sought to portray the world – as – it – is . Serving its patrons, political journalism sought to picture the world – as – it – should – be .

* News – selling journalism sells news downwards to the readers, while agenda – selling journalism sells agendas upwards to the patrons.

* With a digital device at hand, people cannot help but learn the news that is the most relevant to them. Neither effort nor a fee is required for that. News will find them. When the scarcity of content reverses to its opposite, abundance, people do not hunt for the news, the news hunts for people.

* Watchdog journalism of the past, predominantly journalism of fact, sought to reveal the facts for the public to judge. On the other hand, contemporary journalism, having become journalism of opinions, mostly offers an attitude towards ‘already – known’ facts. Or, more accurately, facts have turned into worthy and unworthy facts..

* a political cause will remain the only viable and triggering enough cause for the audience to join with membership contribution. And even the political trigger for donation to media outlets needs to be strong enough: it needs to possess the emotional power of an outrage equivalent to that produced by Trump.

* News isn’t saleable, but agenda – setting still is (or is believed to be). Those media selling news to the audience are doomed. Those selling the audience to the public will survive, as long as Trump and Trumpism are in the spotlight (or as long as some other equally triggering things keep happening after Trump is gone).

* In the post – WWII period, American television drama was “dominated by anthologies of single plays, many of which dealt with working – class life,” wrote Murdock. These dramas, obviously covering ‘pressing social issues’, were popular with audiences and regularly attracted high ratings. However, advertisers were not pleased with the lower – class characters in these dramas, which were seen “as damaging to the images of mobility and affluence they wanted to build up around their products” (Murdock, 1983, p. 143).
Around the mid – 1950s, advertisers started to redirect their budgets toward “the action adventure series that were beginning to emerge from the old Hollywood studios.” There were multiple business advantages of this genre. Adventures were put into extravagant and glamorous settings, while handsome heroes and heroines set the tone, within which the consumption of advertised goods became more desirable. Adventure and action dramas also contained the minimum of dialogue and the maximum of action, which made them ideal material for export overseas.
Thus, allocative control of ad money changed the focus and tone of TV series. This shift, in its turn, defined the prevalent depiction of the world in mass TV and movie dramas in order to make it more ad – suitable. Ad money encouraged consumerism and suppressed politics in meaning production. The media and other mass culture industries were responsive. They created the culture of consumerism.

* advertisers have banned news as ad carriers for their brand.
Digital advertising tools have simply and candidly exposed what was known in the industry long ago: advertising does not like the news because the news is often bad news. It is not a beneficial context for displaying advertisements to the audience.

* Happiness and peacefulness are disincentivized. The trendsetting emotional tone is easy to read even on the faces of TV hosts. In the 1970s, TV anchors had to wear smiles; now, they are obliged to wear an anxious grimace. Today’s news anchors make a kind of ‘basset face’ that would have looked unprofessional on 1970s TV. In return, an anchor with a ‘corgi face’ from the 1970s would look like an idiot on today’s news show.
Not only do the media have to address ‘pressing social issues’, they also have to support and amplify readers’ irritation and frustration with those issues. Ideally, the media should not just exaggerate the menace but induce public concern themselves.

* The propaganda function and self – censorship in the media were not forced or directly ordered and paid for by the elites. When BBC journalist Andrew Marr, in a 1996 interview with Chomsky, stated that he never censored himself, Chomsky’s replied, “I don’t say you’re self – censoring – I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying; but what I’m saying is, if you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting”.

* First, the media switched from ad revenue to reader revenue. Second, the media swayed from journalism of fact toward opinion journalism. These shifts predefined three major changes in sourcing.
1) Decline of bureaucratic sourcing. The importance of ‘raw materials’ and bureaucracies as sources has decreased, while the importance of content curation and expertise has increased.
2) Rise of expert sourcing. The structure of the body of experts in the media has changed. In addition to experts in economics, politics, military, security, and foreign affairs, more academics in liberal studies and experts with a background in activism have joined the media as opinions have become required more than facts.
3) Polarization of sourcing. The growing polarization in the media, caused by the focus on reader revenue, has powered the formation of opposing expert filter bubbles, thus furthering polarization.

* Trump did not supply news, he supplied triggers.

* With the decline of general trust in institutions, the role and number of classical experts will decrease, and the role and number of expert – activists will grow.

* The growing dependence on membership motives and the donating audience makes the polarization of narratives a crucial factor for business success. Polarization means that journalists and the media need to take a stance. The professional standards of seeking truth, objectivity and impartiality are among the first to fall under the risk of being weakened or denied. The next to go are the standards of independence, accuracy, transparency, diligence in newsgathering, accountability and harm limitation.

* When Trump banned travel to China in January 2020, some commentators in the mainstream media jointly downplayed the epidemic danger in China. [351] They justified it by raising a concern that the travel ban could stimulate racism. The travel ban on Brazil at the end of May 2020 raised no such concerns in the media regarding racism, because the main topic of the polarized standoff had already moved in the opposite direction: Trump supported faster reopening and downplayed the pandemic, while the mainstream media urged not to hurry. The travel ban on Brazil did not fit the picture that Trump has scant regard for people’s safety; therefore, the news about the Brazil travel ban was reported neutrally and soon forgotten. It did not make such a polarizing issue as the same decision regarding China.

* The initial trigger and main topic supplier is always a figure on the right side of the political spectrum: Trump in the US, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Morrison in Australia, Modi in India, etc. (More rarely it can be a political party; the German AfD is an example). The same processes, with specific national political and media characteristics, can be observed in France, Hungary, Austria, Italy and even Sweden. A salient political figure (or a force) from the right throws into the fray some ideas or statements, which cause outrage in the mainstream media, which are predominantly liberal (due to their traditions, institutional affiliations, education of journalists and editors, and their belonging to certain social circles). In response, the critical attitude – liberal bias – of the mainstream media should cause a backlash in the conservative media and grassroots media platforms on the internet and social media.
The momentum engendered has begun to concentrate this polarization. The polarization feeds off discourses that both sides can diametrically oppose and thereby maintain its momentum. Hence topics and discourses that do not support polarization will not circulate for long or will be completely ignored. All the energy potential of the media industry will focus on the topics that fit polarization. Neutrality is an unfit asset for the donscription business model, as it has no potency for triggering donations.

* When the best minds and most gifted authors become obsessed with snapping at each other, they principally focus on achieving a stronger bite, tending to overlook the events and trends outside their coterie of vipers. They are too engrossed to notice if their rhetorical fight is resonating at all beyond the confines of their battles.

* Martin Gurri noted, “We aim to impose our facts and annihilate theirs , a process closer to intellectual holy war than to critical thinking.”

* “Donald Trump is the first president to turn postmodernism against itself.”

* people tend to share “images of food that look less and less like what regular people eat every day.” The reason was that, “…the algorithms that drive participation and attention – getting in social media, the addictive “gamification” aspects such as likes and shares, invariably favored the odd and unusual. When someone wanted to broaden out beyond his or her immediate social networks, one of the most effective ways to achieve mass appeal turned out to be by turning to the extreme.”

As a result of such an environmental setting, “the most popular food porn images depicted massive hamburgers that were impossible to eat.” [367]
Indeed, regular food (and regular whatever) cannot trigger a strong response. Modesty is a lost cause on social media.