It’s no secret talk radio has seen a shift in the past two decades. Michael Berry wonders if social media has had a part in that.
While guest hosting The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show, Berry mentioned that before social media, not everyone had a platform to share opinions, which was monopolized by the media. But today, it’s free range for everyone.
“In the past, media was where a person promoting an opinion or making a statement would speak, and it was a one-way relationship. What talk radio allowed, which was pretty cool, was at least a few people could respond to the hosts, so you had a degree of interactive engagement,” said Berry. “And that made talk radio a special place. Even at the very local level, somebody that didn’t have a Rush Limbaugh or Clay and Buck audience platform, you’d still hear this interaction and it was fun.
“It was fun to overhear, like you overhear a conversation. It was interesting. That’s what the letter to the editor was for the old newspaper. It was an opportunity for the reader to give some feedback and offer their opinion,” Michael Berry continued. “But social media democratized the flurry of opinions because we all have opinions. And particularly in modern America, we really all have opinions. We’re encouraged to have opinions. We’re rewarded for having opinions. And so, thus began this very noisy, polluted environment of people offering opinions.”
