The Deep File: ‘Censorship complex’ or realignment? The American news media landscape in 2023
In which, a series of bankruptcies and firings signal a massive shift in the American political landscape with consequences for how will receive (and perceive) the news going forward.
April and May were interesting months in the American media landscape that will likely have a significant shaping influence on how we get our news and let it inform our views in the coming years. In this Deep File, I collect my coverage of this media realignment and explore some of its more striking examples and consequences.
April 28: America’s political realignment comes for the mainstream media
I’ve talked quite a bit in this newsletter of America’s political realignment over the course of the last couple of election cycles. I’ve given less attention to how that realignment is affecting institutions adjacent to politics, namely, the mass media.
At this point, the so-called “mainstream media” is broadly seen to be aligned with the Democratic Party’s center-left ideology with Fox News being the heavyweight mainstream conservative outlet.
This week, however, saw major shake ups in the mainstream media as CNN fired Don Lemon and Fox fired Tucker Carlson, the king of prime time news.
Carlson’s seemingly unassailable status and shock firing quickly eclipsed news of other shakeups.
Fox News’ viewership quickly tanked as Carlson’s fans tuned into his Twitter feed, which suggests that “Main Street” conservatives may largely desert major media in favor of alternative sources (feel free to share this newsletter with the former Fox viewers in your life! 😉).
This media realignment may mean that we no longer use the term “mainstream media,” but “establishment” or “legacy” media to denote it from “alternative” or “independent” media.
May 12: Navigating the “censorship complex”
Noted, and controversial, independent journalist Matt Taibi published an essay this week outlining what he has come to call the “censorship complex”:
“The “Censorship-Industrial Complex” is just the Military-Industrial Complex reborn for the “hybrid warfare” age.
Much like the war industry, pleased to call itself the “defense” sector, the “anti-disinformation” complex markets itself as merely defensive, designed to fend off the hostile attacks of foreign cyber-adversaries who unlike us have “military limitations.” The CIC, however, is neither wholly about defense, nor even mostly focused on foreign “disinformation.” It’s become instead a relentless, unified messaging system aimed primarily at domestic populations, who are told that political discord at home aids the enemy’s undeclared hybrid assault on democracy.”
I genuinely try to keep this newsletter focused on the news itself, though I have discussed elements of how the news is reported at different points. This week was a little different, however, because Taibi’s phrase was a good reminder to pay attention to the information environment - the who, what, when, where, and why of the presentation of information, not just the information itself.
How this week was being covered in those establishment and independent media outlets mentioned above was very, very different, indicating Taibi’s analysis of a “censorship complex” isn’t far off.
Exhibit A: The Biden administration
What do you think would/should be a bigger story?
Story A: A President who has claimed for years that he and his family are clean of any dirty money from foreign entities to have that claim exposed as not just a lie, but a lie covering a network of illicit money transactions?
Story B: A first time member of Congress being indicted on charges of wire fraud and lying on a federal form, and additional related charges?
In both cases, public officials are caught in both immoral and allegedly criminal activity. However, I think we would all agree that the scale of Story A would make it the bigger story.
That’s not what you saw in the establishment media this week. A House investigation released a 30-page memo detailing what appears to be a web of influence peddling involving millions of dollars paid out to members of the Biden family going back to the President's years as VP. But there was nary a mention of it outside conservative media outlets.
Instead, major media outlets focused on Story B and the indictment of Republican Representative George Santos.
Of course, we could just chalk this all up to editorial preferences and personality politics, but even in matters of public interest and security we see similarly strange/selective editing.
Exhibit B: Gun violence
Not too long ago, we had a tragic school shooting in Nashville perpetuated by a transgendered man. I noted at the time that the identity and motivations of the shooter were quietly being passed over by both the media and Democratic policymakers clamoring for gun control.
That suddenly changed after a mass shooting in Texas this week left eight dead. The shooter was identified as a Hispanic man, but quickly identified as “white supremacist”, and Axios picked up the line to suggest that Russian disinformation sites may be influencing such extremism.
A month after the Nashville shooting we have no report on the shooter’s motivations despite the fact there was a manifesto left behind that the policy promised to release before refusing to do so. In Texas, though, in less than a week, we have a Hispanic shooter whose motivations are quickly tied to white supremacy and Russian disinformation in less than a week, with the President loudly calling for gun control with the whole “thoughts and prayers are not enough” line.
And now, this just in, it’s apparently a misinformation red flag for me to suggest that these glaring double standards are “not coincidences”. So, I won’t say that. I’ll say that I have to agree Mr. Taibi and argue that these are two case studies of a “censorship complex” at work.
May 19: Collusion? What collusion? Whose collusion?
It’s not just the border that was the latest political story to get the polarized media treatment recently. The conclusions of a special investigation led by John Durham on former President Trump’s alleged campaign collusion with Russia (yeah, that again) concluded (again) that the Trump campaign did not collude with Russia, that the infamous Steele Dossier detailing the alleged collusion was literal “fake news” (even getting laughed out of the room by Britain’s MI6), and that the DOJ and FBI were complicit in the legitimation of the collusion story (in addition to being complicit in covering for Hunter Biden’s alleged wrongdoing).
That’s all pretty damning, but you would only know about those details if you read conservative media outlets. If you read establishment or progressive media outlets, you got little to no coverage on the Durham report or broadsides on how wrong it all was. The polarizing effects of the realigning media space continue…
May 26: Consumer preferences driving the media realignment
The last several weeks, I’ve referred to America’s media realignment and two stories popped across the ol’ RSS feeds that caught my attention in terms of where this realignment is headed.
The first story argued that with Twitter being the place Ron DeSantis announced his bid for the presidency and with the collapse of viewership at Fox, Elon Musk has emerged as the king of the conservative media space… and progressive media outlets are none too pleased.
The second story came from Gallup, reporting that increasingly Americans are looking for news not from cable, or even social media, but from individuals, which explains why firing Tucker Carlson was more loss than gain for Fox. Somewhat troubling, though, is that the Gallup study also noted that this personalist approach to news indicates an increase, not decrease in polarizing viewpoints as people opt to follow individuals they largely agree with.
In other words, the media realignment is a move away from a more centralized, institutionalized approach to news and towards a personality-driven, bespoke model.
This is worth an essay in itself, but for now I’ll just note that in many ways this trend is merely following the cultural trend of personalization and individualized customization. If I can design every aspect of my life, why shouldn’t I design my information bubble as well? Makes sense my social media platforms like Twitter will likely become the amorphous center of such a media environment.
Consequences: Dark side PR politics
If you’re a political party or leader who has poured years and years of effort into gaining control of those institutionalized, “commanding heights” of culture like the news media, though, such developments as I’ve outlined above are a threat. For President Biden, the Democratic Party, and their allies in the legacy/establishment media, this realignment seriously blunts, if not undercuts, the power of their PR politics model. So what to do?
Well, if you’re the dominant power, then I guess you can follow the oft paraphrased/misquoted strategy: Ignore, laugh, ridicule, fight… well, then you lose.
Unfortunately, it seems like we’re somewhere between “ridicule” and “fight,” as the rising tide of alternative/opposition voices appear to be overwhelming the Internet from Vox’s POV (the ridicule), and recent reports suggest that the Biden administration has been throwing around grant money to allegedly lay the perceptual groundwork to demonize the opposition.
That’s the dark side of PR politics: Once you lose control of the microphone and/or credibility with your audience, you only keep control through force and/or manipulation.