The shifting nature of journalism - it's being turned upside down

Over the last few years, journalism has undergone a massive change. The media organizations many journalists work(ed) for are also in the process of being turned upside-down.

What can be described as the mass media in some form employed around 95 percent of journalists, where their prime function was to disseminate news, information, and objective analysis to the public at large. The mass media was portrayed as the "Fourth Estate", a body that would act as a check and balance to government in a democratic system.

Journalism is not always what it appears to be

The uncovering of the Watergate break-in and the pursuant cover-up by the White House, which eventually brought down US president Richard Nixon, has been described as the epitome of investigative journalism. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein received much of their information from an insider whistleblower, known as 'Deep Throat". However, the revelation that 'Deep Throat' was Mark Felt, an assistant director of the FBI at that time, arises another possibility. The possibility that information provided by Felt to Woodward and Bernstein was intended by the 'Deep State' to end Nixon's presidency. Felt was (perhaps unsuspectingly) an agent of the 'Deep State' on a mission to end a presidency.

The lesson is there is truth, and there are motivations behind truths, where the public may never find out the reality of the situation.

This example above, shows the power of journalism in finding the truth, or the flip side, where journalism is susceptible to being used by unidentified forces for the purposes of fulfilling hidden agendas.

Journalism has been manipulated over the centuries, where the most well-intentioned journalists have either been misled, or themselves been dishonest. Journalism is often a pivot point between exercising the aspirations of the 'Fourth Estate', or acting for the Deep State.

Much reporting has been influenced, either intentionally or unintentionally by state narratives. Weapons of mass destruction, Y2K, and Black Lives Matter (BLM) were partly media creations. Images of Obama, Biden, Trump, Assange, Putin, Zelenski, and others were carefully crafted by the legacy media, shifting public opinion either for or against them. This paradox of sorts has over the last 30 years created a loss of confidence and trust by the public in the legacy media.

The public has grown wise. In the recent US presidential election, major legacy network audiences plummeted. Audiences moved across to the independent media, as faith has been lost in legacy journalism. Many journalists through pushing partisan narratives helped to destroy their employers. This will lead to fire-sales in the not too distant future. Comcast is already trying to sell MSNBC.

Today's journalistic landscape is vastly different to what it once was.

Traditionally, graduates of journalism, economics, arts and other humanities would start their careers in journalism through what was once a very stable industry. Alternatively, cadet journalists would move into one of the satellite areas, such as local newspapers, regional radio, television stations, or specialist magazines. Over time, some would rise up to senior reporter and eventually editor in print media. Some would enter investigative journalism in crime, business or government. In television and radio, some would become a host or anchor of their own programs. Becoming the anchor of the news desk, or anchor of a long running high rating program was the pinnacle of the profession. Successful journalists would be given their own columns in print media, where they would focus on Op Eds, that in the past were very influential in shaping public opinion.

In the past journalists tended to settle within legacy media corporations which represented their political beliefs, being left, centre, or right. Up until around 2010, being a journalist within the legacy media was considered a good career choice. One had a career path. Journalists would tend to move from one corporation within the legacy media to another, or an international media organization, which grew out of the CNN success in the 1980s. Very few would ever go out of the industry as an independent.

The systemic control over narratives of the legacy media created a prism that has forced out some of the best journalists. The impending mass layoffs of journalistic staff at legacy media companies due to declining audience sizes will act as a great impetuous of independent journalism in the near future, which took a foothold during the Covid pandemic, and came of age during the recent US presidential election. The rest of the world is following this trend and set to play a major role in future elections.

The new journalistic landscape

This rise of the internet and ability of people to utilize platforms like YouTube from 2010 onwards as it became more sophisticated, provided a potential platform for citizen journalism. The so-called Arab Spring around the 2010s showed the potential of social media for groups to get information out to the public.

Prior to this period, WHO rather than WHAT was the prime determinant of who was heard on the media and published. This prevented any balance of views getting public airing. Initially social media changed that. In addition, many academic journalists opened their own websites and published articles in websites such as this one, offering new perspectives to potential readers. These conditions precipitated the beginnings and rise of the early independent media.

Podcasting is the new frontier in journalism. Podcasting was looked down up as glorified blogging, which was more opinionated than factual in most cases. A number of podcasts excelled during the recent US presidential election campaign and challenged the legacy media's viewing audience numbers. Many prominent podcasters are now becoming household names within the independent media. The adversarial David Frost mode of interviewing is being replaced with a successful "sit down coffee talk" style that has become a trademark of Joe Rogan.

Many prominent journalists and broadcasters from the legacy media such as Tucker Carsen, Megyn Kelly, Russell Brand, and many others have moved across successfully to independent journalism. Some of the successes have their own staff of researchers, journalists and production crews. The very top echelon are financially much better off than when they were employed in the legacy media.

Rumble, Spotify, and X (formally Twitter) are becoming premier platforms for podcasters. This area is growing exponentially. They have taken much of the audience the legacy media once had.

Many print journalists have now moved across to Substack. The Substack platform allows articles with audio versions, podcasts, and video broadcasts. Substack is accompanied by Notes, which is a "Twitter like" feed based community that is rapidly becoming a 'go to' place. Seymour Hersh, Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Bari Weiss, among thousands of other journalists have moved across to this reader supported platform. These sites have paywalls and collect subscriptions from readers. Some of the successful Substack sites are reported to earn USD 500,000 gross revenue per annum.

Substack is still growing very fast. However, many new sites fail to deliver what they promise and become dormant, leaving subscribers in the lurch. Many other business model news portals have mushroomed across the world, relying on advertising from their websites. However, many fall by the wayside, unless they are financed externally by a benefactor. Many of these sites are also being blocked by government authorities, which is becoming a major hazard in the independent news industry.

Independent media has shown itself much more capable of going after and exposing the "Deep State" than the legacy media. Legacy media has been shown to have 'relationships' with agents of the Deep State, and influenced from the large revenue streams that Big Pharma provided. Those in this new media aren't burdened by the editorial lines and narratives the legacy media has been caught up in. It appears to be only the conservative side of the independent media that is taking a critical look at president elect Trump's new appointments.

Pushback against independent media

The tool of choice by the establishment to pushback against the independent media are the so-called factcheckers. Factcheckers are usually funded by left leaning political organizations, big pharma, governments through clandestine means, and even the intelligence agencies. The factcheckers with their adversarial approaches usually attempt to destroy narratives, rather than directly tackle facts. The flood arguments with superlative information. Quite often, the factcheckers themselves are often incorrect and misleading, and very difficult to communicate with and obtain a reply, if challenged.

During the pandemic factcheckers often attacked recognized world experts. These organizations were based upon journalists, where medically qualified staff didn't even exist within their organizations. The legitimacy of some of these factcheckers are mostly self-proclaimed.

This highlights a group of journalists within the industry who could be best described as presstitutes. Presstitutes are 'hired guns' employed to put out particular narratives and stories into the public domain. The spread "fake News', or mis-information deliberately. This is very wide spread throughout the legacy media today.

Pressititution has been allowed to flourish today because the legacy media is one of the few places those who want a career as a journalist can be employed. They have no choice but to be lucratively paid pressititutes. This is destroying the attractiveness of journalism today, which is losing favour as a tertiary education pursuit. Jobs in public relations, media promotion and advertising usually turn out to be much more lucrative, and provide better upward career mobility.

A word about AI

One of the biggest threats to the journalism industry is Artificial intelligence (AI). Content in online news portal is sometimes created through AI, making it unnecessary to employ content writers. Articles can be quickly produced through the technology, edited, and posted. However, AI is based upon 'grounded knowledge' already on the internet. Acetic and decorative descriptions created upon feelings of the moment are difficult to recreate in situational news or topic situations. As yet, AI will not be able to replace the spark and innovation of journalists as they work on ideas and hunches for creating content that will benefit the platform they are working for.

All within the independent media have not forgotten what happened to Julian Assange, who exposed war atrocities committed by the US military, and the long suffering he endured. In 2023, 45 journalists were killed in the line of duty. Legal sanctions and lawfare are also being used to silence many within the independent media.

Independent media is the last bastion of hopefully honest journalism that is capable of exposing the excesses of government and "Deep States" in countries around the world. Independent media is now the legitimate "Fourth Estate".