The mighty pen falls silent: A reflection on the media’s struggle for voice

Why Isn’t the Media Doing Anything? Why aren’t they challenging this, that, or him? If another person says this to me, I’m going to blow like a rocket over Ukraine. After years of attack and erosion, the media – or what remains of my profession – is doing its best, while circumstances become increasingly precarious.

Corporate influence on the media

Last week alone, the owner of the Washington Post, a certain Jeff Bezos, decreed henceforth all opinion and commentary “would be in support and defence of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.” Just not free speech.

This, in the same week that the Trump administration took control of the White House press pool, meaning it now decides which journalists get access to the president, White House briefings, and Air Force One, and who asks questions at press conferences.

Barriers to media access

This is after the global news syndicate Associated Press was barred from presidential events for calling the Gulf of Mexico by its internationally recognised name. When The New York Times, National Public Radio, NBC News, and others were ejected from their Pentagon offices. This is when the most powerful people in the world constantly discredit or sue the media.

There’s a world of difference between silence and being muzzled. Meanwhile, the people who complain most about the media’s complacency aren’t exactly engaging with it.

The Complexity of Modern Problems

We live in the world of the soundbite and short attention spans, and the problems we face are complex. They’re also really depressing. I understand why people switch off. If you’re just trying to hold body and soul together, scraping a living, making dinner while the baby screams, doing algebra homework till 9pm, getting up at 4am to commute to your dreary job, then who has the time or energy to dissect all the news?

The Challenge of In-Depth Media Consumption

Take the delicious Sunday New York Times, which Himself brought home from the US. Section after section devoted to the facts, fact-checking the factoids, and opinion pieces by specialists. It was fascinating – and two days’ work. You know how many people read the New York Times? In the past decade, its print circulation has halved to fewer than 300 000 copies daily. And we lost our Saturday Citizen.

But history will happen, whether we are paying attention or not.

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