on the failure to inform
We can see how our information ecosystem is in decay in the way that news media has been monopolized by the holders of capital to push the boundaries of what narratives are acceptable in the public discourse that dehumanize large swathes of society in order to tighten the ruling class’ grip on power in the face of a multi-crisis. From the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter and the climate justice movement, our slogans, ethics and analyses of power are being co-opted by the political right and center to effectively divide our voice and conquer the last remaining untamed elements of modernity in the name of civilizational progress. This essay aims to discuss the failure of our information ecosystem in achieving its stated purpose of actually informing us and its success in driving narratives that ultimately serve those already benefiting from the status quo.
Before going any further, it’s necessary to make clear what is meant by the “information ecosystem” in this article. The “media” is its backbone and frequently abstracted to an amorphous body led by a secret cabal or something equally nefarious and antisemitic. What this article discusses instead is the technological and social process of disseminating information through institutional or semi-institutional structures such as newspapers, TV channels or social media sites. It is understood as the platform of and the vehicle to political discourse in the public sphere. While social media supposedly “democratized” the traditional process of information dissemination, its systematic power imbalance was never addressed, for that would have been counterproductive to sustaining the status quo. What has changed, however, is the multitude of platforms that are capable of disrupting the legacy media’s grip on political discourse through their engagement-optimized recommender systems.
There is plenty of (academic) criticism of the media model we have now. There is a conflict of interest that those who pay more are covered less critically, and those who are othered by the status quo are continuously othered to support its existence. Mainstream publications like the NYT, WaPo, The Atlantic or The Guardian have manufactured consent for crimes against humanity continuously by always spotlighting the aggressor as the misunderstood savior and the oppressed as either these complex people they fail to understand or so simplistic that they lose the nuance of their experience. Consequently, there is very little analysis of power and critique of really anything of what makes this world so fucked because the backers behind these institutions profit off these abuses so their coverage is skewed in their favor. They have this hard obsession with decorum that overrides any human impulse for actual resistance of fascism beyond soft critique—to save face—shrouded in praise for the boot.
Unfortunately, these institutions are the most well resourced for gathering information on the ground so some of their reporting remains indispensable. However, that alone is no excuse to support nor trust them. Their for-profit business model is so fatally flawed that any modicum of independence is lost. They may be independent of the State, but they're not independent of other equally powerful actors capable of shaping the discourse through other means, like social media companies, advertisers or their own investors. So while these institutions may not produce “Fake News” as often as some loudmouths proclaim, their power in society as the dominant arena for political discourse demands far more public and actually independent oversight over the handling of financial resources, their sources of funding and processes for acquiring information that is missing today.
Even disregarding the flaws in the existing journalistic institutions, who has the funds to pay the high monthly premium of just one newspaper's subscription, let alone two or three for “viewpoint diversity”? Certainly not students or anyone low on cash—the latter being an exponentially growing group. This is a business model built on a foundation that demands compensation that is inconceivable to set aside for parts of the population made most vulnerable through sloppy engagement-first coverage.
Sadly, I lack a concrete answer for what needs to replace this model, but I'd love to hear your thoughts about this—either per email or preferably in your own blog post!