Media - You Keep Using That Word...

The Media is a handy whipping boy. Consider these takes:

• Over Coverage - By over-covering Trump's shenanigans the media provided so much coverage that it engineered a Trump win.

• Imbalance - By over covering Clinton's email scandal and under covering Trump's ugly statements about women and minorities the media was in the tank for Trump.

• Corrupt  - The media was clearly anti-Trump post to post and in the tank for Hillary.  Trump won by pointing it out to the common folk who voted for him, ignoring the them completely.

• False Equivalency - The Media, afraid to call a spade a spade, pitched a false equivalency matching (for example) Trump's financial dealings against the Clinton foundation or Trumps misogyny against Clinton's spouse. The result was pulling Hillary down to Trumps level. 

• Bait and Switch - Trump tweets something outrageous to cover for a different, more complicated story that is emerging. The media takes the bait and the better story is buried while the media pontificates about how Trump is silly and incautious.

Examples abound to support each of these narratives. For example, CNN gave airtime to dozens of trump rallies and events - even events promoting his hotel - resulting in billions of dollars (by some estimates) of free publicity. Yet each of these has contra-examples as well - and all of them suffer from a fatal flaw. They misrepresent or narrowly define "the media" and they fail to present an alternative universe where things might be different. 

The Media - You Keep Using that Word.

The first issue is that the media is not one thing. It's not even a cohesive conglomerate of many things. If you think of media as the way people receive information then twitter itself is a direct conduit from news makers to eyeballs. People get their news from Facebook, Instagram, memes, snap-chat, and a Byzantine array of web sites that may or may not be tied to actual news rooms. It's a giant amalgam of technologies, approaches, print, television and new media.

For cost reasons each outlet has to find a niche to serve - conservative, liberal, center, objective, opinion, advocacy etc. All of this serves to blur the line between news and opinion. Meanwhile news has become so varied and outlets so ubiquitous that people are free to window shop for the news that suites them. They pick their own echo chamber, and that outlet happily caters to them. They know who pays the bills. In a competitive landscape where eyeballs matter you choose a constituency and make them happy. What's the incentive to do otherwise.

There is no Illumedianatti

The second issue is collaboration. There is this notion that the media is collaborating on how coverage is handled. In my view this is ridiculous. Media coverage is market driven. Coupled with free speech it may be the best example of Adam Smith's "invisible hand" you could dream up. The idea that there is some overarching subversive goal that all media is working toward is a conspiratorial fantasy - and it exists in spades on both the right and the left. 

Clearly there is no media grand council, no secret meetings, no "illumedianatti" of Machiavellian editors and journalists who are engineering our society from behind the scenes. Instead there are a lot of dedicated professionals trying to do their jobs with a good number of charlatans mixed in. Yes many outlets put forward a point of view - but that is hardly a secret. Breitbart is right, Huffpo is left, CNN in the middle somewhere (I'll get comments on that I'm sure). If such collaboration exists, it would surely be more coherent than our current goulash of views and insights. 

The real question is, if you care about objectivity, what do you do for news?

The Muse Method

If you want my personal view on how to choose news I would say this:

1. Read print journalism - subscribe to the Washington Post, the NYT, the Wall Street Journal and your local paper. The coverage is more complete and there is more thought and less "hot takes." 
2. Don't believe anything that you really really want to believe. If you hate Trump and see a story that says he was caught in a love nest with a hooker and giant wombat you may really want that to be true. That's a reason to check yourself. When your passion becomes a filter for the news you are in real trouble trying staying objective.
3. Follow many sources from all angles. In my twitter feed  I try to follow lots of people from right, left, center and even la la land. It keeps me from buying anything on credit, and keeps me checking facts.

(Thanks to Zeynep Tufekci - @zeynep - of the NYT for stimulating my thoughts in this area)