Americans have been growing increasingly distrustful of the legacy media for years, if not decades.
Indeed, some think the dam of trust finally broke last week as a result of recent events and earth-shattering revelations about Big Tech and its alleged bias.
But why would Big Tech’s sinister actions have any influence on rendering the corporate media industry a thing of the past?
YouTube superstar, Dr. Steve Turley, discussed with his 1,020,000 followers on Friday why he feels the tide has finally turned in favor of Americans and the free flow of information. He began his discussion by recapping some of the bombshell findings uncovered last week by new Twitter CEO, Elon Musk.
“This, I believe, is the biggest revelation of them all. After the dumping of Twitter files part two, Ian Miles Cheong tweeted out to Elon this, and I’ll quote. So, here’s a question for Elon and Bari Weiss. Were any political candidates, either in the U.S. or elsewhere, subject to shadow banning while they were running for office or seeking re-election?,” Turley quoted. “In other words, was Twitter engaged in deliberate election interference? And Elon replied with one word. What is it? Yes.”
This was after Musk already unveiled a great deal of earlier information, showing that the platform suppressed, hid and stifled information they disagreed with, as well as doing the same to those personalities they wanted to silence.
“Are you sensing a political earthquake in the making?” Turley asked his audience. “And by the way, I know a lot of people have been saying they want Elon to just dump all the dirt right away. Just in one big, huge, heaping manure pile of rot once and for all. But if you think about it, I mean the way he’s doing it, drip by drip by drip, he’s allowing citizens to participate in the process of the revelation.”
Americans knew something was wrong. They knew society wasn’t as one-sided as Twitter often seemed – with left-wing extremism becoming the norm and traditional values or opinions comprising only a small minority of thought. And as drops of information have trickled out over recent days, interested bystanders could participate and weigh-in in real-time.
“And this is what makes the age of social media so unique. We’re no longer simply a passive audience, being lectured to by the professional pundit class that tells us what to believe as they cling to their monopolization of information. We now are part of the news. We are intimately interwoven with the information that’s coming out. It’s very quantum in many ways if you think about it,” Turley said.
Gone are the days of sitting in front of the television at 6:00 pm to be told the news. Now, we all report the news on the fly as we live our everyday lives.
“An example of that is how every person with a cell phone, every person with one of these, is now officially a cameraman. Right? Every person with one of these is now a cameraman,” Turley said. “You take any major event that’s happening all over the world, and the moment that event happens, the very first way we all set it is through some kind of cell phone capturing. It’s not through a satellite van. The days of the satellite van are basically done; they’re over.”
On the heels of the disgraceful revelations showing the shadow banning and suppression of conservative personalities and opinions, Turley noted that his personal Twitter following remained flat for a year before suddenly gaining thousands of new followers in recent weeks.
In his opinion, these recent developments only hasten true news freedom.
“It’s not just a matter of somebody catching this amazing event live on video via their cell phone. That person then turns around and what do they do? They load it up, right, they upload it on their social media accounts,” Turley pointed out. “And so that person now becomes a pundit. That person now becomes an independent news outlet. Everyone with a cell phone is a cameraman. Everyone with a social media is a pundit.”
While a small segment of consumers will still sit back, waiting to be told what to know and how to think, many have now taken a more active role. More than ever before in history, a free flow of news is now attainable and digestible by virtually all. On their terms – unencumbered, undiluted and unrefined.
“And then they turn around and say we’re anti-democratic!” Turley mocked. “We’re the anti-democratic ones! We’re the ones who are literally bathing in this, what they call network society, that’s rising up. Where every single person with a cell phone is a cameraman. Every person with a social media account is a pundit. This is a total democratization of news. And then they turn around and call us anti-democratic.”
Turley also believes Musk has astutely tapped into this evolving dynamic by putting these shameful discoveries in exactly the right place – the hands of the people.
“He’s rolling out these revelations in and through citizen journalists and citizen commentary, and I think it’s brilliant because I think it’s keeping with the times. I think he fully understands we’re moving more and more into a network society and that the old way of doing news, by passing it through or by laying at the feet of gatekeepers, who supposedly had this monopolization of information to which we were privy and then who would formulate these monolithic narratives, these frames, that are there deliberately to prime us towards a particular kind of emotional disposition towards the issues they’re framing for us. So as to fulfill what’s called their agenda-setting function in our government,” he said.
Turley believes the horrible Twitter disclosures represent a turning point for American citizens and how they perceive and consume news.
And also a crucial turning point for the legacy media’s role in our society.
Rick Schultz is a former Sports Director for WFUV Radio at Fordham University. He has coached and mentored hundreds of Sports Broadcasting students at the Connecticut School of Broadcasting, Marist College and privately. His media career experiences include working for the Hudson Valley Renegades, Army Sports at West Point, The Norwich Navigators, 1340/1390 ESPN Radio in Poughkeepsie, NY, Time Warner Cable TV, Scorephone NY, Metro Networks, NBC Sports, ABC Sports, Cumulus Media, Pamal Broadcasting and WATR. He has also authored a number of books including “A Renegade Championship Summer” and “Untold Tales From The Bush Leagues”. To get in touch, find him on Twitter @RickSchultzNY.
