Cracks are showing in our media infrastructure
A fragile compromise between mission and profits worked for the news business for the 20th century. But that compact is breaking now in small but significant ways.
One media story I’ve been thinking a lot about this week is the news coming out of CBS, which appears to be on the verge of settling a lawsuit filed by President Trump.
This is not a defamation case, as you might expect. Instead Trump accused “60 Minutes,” the network’s marquee news show, of deceptively editing an interview with Kamala Harris.
The interview, which aired during the presidential campaign, wasn’t even about Trump; it was about the war between Israel and Gaza. And editing for brevity, content and other editorial reasons, is obviously one of the most basic facets of news production.
According to the New York Times: “Legal experts have called the suit baseless and an easy victory for CBS.” Deadline used the word “dubious” in a good run down of those legal issues here, noting that the case relies on a Texas law around false advertising, and that it was perhaps intentionally filed in Amarillo, Texas, where there is only one federal judge — a Trump appointee who “has issued a number of ‘extremely conservative’ positions in recent years.”
Nonetheless, Paramount’s board (Paramount owns CBS) has reportedly drawn up the terms of a potential settlement, which could be in the tens of millions of dollars, according to the FT — a remarkable capitulation from a major media company in the face of such a lawsuit. Looming in the background over all of this: Shari Redstone, Paramount’s controlling shareholder, is set to receive a payday in the billions if the Trump administration approves Paramount’s merger with Hollywood studio Skydance. Multiple outlets have reported that Redstone has said she favors settling the case.
One thing that always struck me working at mainstream news organizations was the occasional gap between what we did and the supposed mission of journalism, as it is commonly understood. Journalism, as described at J-school, in scholarly discussions and debates, and in imaginations both private and public has lofty ambitions — to investigate, be “objective,” uncover uncomfortable truths, and shine a light on wrongdoing no matter the cost. It’s celebrated as an almost social justice-like pursuit; activism adjacent, even, as long as you don’t call it that.
When it’s convenient, news organizations like to cloak themselves in this mission — watch any Pulitzer Prize winner’s speech or see branding campaigns like, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
But there is a bit of contradiction with for-profit companies’ advertising their mission as some sort of bold justice campaign. A for-profit company is designed, of course, for profit first and foremost. That is not to defend spinelessness, hypocrisy, weakness or capitulation; just to say that a system works the way it is built.
For so much of the 20th Century, these two pursuits — profit and justice — co-existed peacefully and even symbiotically for mass media. But in an era where the business outlook for media companies has come under significant threat, and where there is so much money and power at stake at the top of these companies, this contradiction is showing, like an old layer of paint exposed by the elements. It seems like it will only get worse as these two forces accelerate.
Every reporter who’s worked at a private media company can attest to the complicated dance these twin goals require in the Internet era — the need to constantly feed the never-ending hunger for content online while producing impactful, quality work; the imperative to drive engagement through juicy headlines and stories; the blurry lines between an old-school idea of “newsworthiness” and clickiness. Many news organizations assign writers or stand-up entire beats conceived to gain market share, subscribers, and/or eyeballs. At its best, it works. But when you step away from it for a bit you realize how delicate it really is. And how vulnerable that system is when the pressures get too great, like they are at CBS.
Here is what else we’re reading this week:
CONTENT MODERATION for big tech companies like Meta, Bytedance and Alphabet is tough work psychologically that is often farmed out to workers across the world. Now, those workers are increasingly getting organized. A quick rundown on that here at The Verge.
IN OKLAHOMA, thousands of high school students will be required to learn about Trump's claims that the 2020 election was tainted by fraud. In addition to its other shortcomings, it will cost taxpayers $33 million. As Popular Information reports:
The new curriculum includes a section that requires students to "analyze contemporary turning points of 21st-century American society." That requirement includes the following:
“Identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results by looking at graphs and other information, including the sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities in key battleground states, the security risks of mail-in balloting, sudden batch dumps, an unforeseen record number of voters, and the unprecedented contradiction of ‘bellwether county’ trends.”
A NEW PAPER published by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth calls for economic policy makers to better consider effects on democracy. In a particularly interesting section, the authors analyze the failures of the Biden administration’s belief in “deliverism” — that successful economic policy would speak for itself.
As we described above, a large literature in the social sciences suggests that we cannot expect changes in individuals’ material conditions, on their own, to produce changes in an individual’s political views and actions—let alone changing their attachment to democracy—especially on such a short-term basis. For policies to register political impacts, policymakers must craft policies that can resonate in individuals’ lives, and especially with their identities and the narratives that structure their worldviews over time…People need to “see” themselves in the design and delivery of policies.
STARBUCKS wants to double the amount of stores it has??
HEADLINE APPRECIATION of the week: “One Hundred Days of Ineptitude.”It’s also a strong piece. From David Remnick at the New Yorker.
“Trump’s Quest for Crypto Riches Is a Constitutional Scandal Waiting to Happen.” Or so says Wired.
HAPPY MAY DAY: a sizable majority of voters think that unionizing would improve benefits, wages, worker safety, job security and more.
How workers at GM’s Silao, Guanajuato plant won raises even in the midst of tariff threats (Labor Notes)
MORE THAN 2,000 UAW members who make submarines for General Dynamics in Connecticut are gearing up for their first potential strike in 40 years. They are demanding better retirement security in the form of pensions.
And finally, in the media category, the latest update from the RFK Jr / Olivia Nuzzi mess is that her ex-fiance, and former New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza is out at Politico after having apparently never been able to bounce back from this scandal. He’s started a Substack and has gone unfiltered, saying corporate media is not up to the task of covering what’s going on right now. It may be a little chaotic, but it is sort of refreshing to see journalists like Lizza, who have had to spent their whole careers maintaining carefully crafted public images, to just say what they feel.
See you all next week.