You’re under attack. You’ve been under attack for a long time. It’s not just defunding public media like NPR and PBS, although that’s been a wet dream for conservatives since public media has existed. It’s unfortunate that it took this long for people to notice, but I guess authoritarianism is like that.
I’ve already written about the need for public media, how some rural areas (hello, Alaska) have many towns without any local news coverage other than their tiny NPR and PBS repeaters, how public media — through CPB grants and partnerships — has been at the forefront of some of today’s most relevant news coverage.
Congress has threatened to end all that for decades, but it took an authoritarian President and a truly sycophantic Senate and House to make it a reality. You know all that. You knew all that well before it happened, and you didn’t sound the alarm. And here we are.
But you aren’t protected if you don’t work in public radio or television, either. Whether or not Stephen Colbert got booted for his content or to save money, there are a lot of other examples of how voices are being silenced or shunted off to Substack and Ghost and podcasts and social media, where they can be drowned out for good.
Yes, we have more opportunity to get our opinions in front of people than ever before, but the sheer number of those voices and the dreaded algorithm mean that you’re going to be confronted with far more material than any human can process, all at once, all begging for subscriptions and donations.
It’s one thing traditional media can do that the new media doesn’t do: essentially, curate and digest news and opinion in one easy-to-access package. If something’s happening right now, you can root through a thousand social media posts of varying credibility or you can just turn on the TV or radio and, if they’re doing their job, immediately get the latest.
However, the media can’t do that job if their own jobs are in jeopardy any time their private equity masters need to get someone in the regulatory process off their backs so they can merge or sell or buy. The walls that used to define the media – editorial and sales separated, bosses who protected their staffs – were torn down years ago.
Which is how we got here, along with the rise of blatantly partisan news sources and the excruciating inability of traditional news media to realize what was happening and its stubborn adherence to a false objectivity.
Call it sanewashing, call it both-sidesism, but it’s all part of the same thing. It helped people whose interests are to silence the media so that they can get away with whatever they want. Starving public media because Morning Edition didn’t interview enough Republican congressmen is one way to do it, and if it forces some small market public radio stations to go dark and the big guns like WNYC and KQED to lay off reporters, well, that’s where we are.
Stress the “we.” If you’re in the media, you’re not safe, whether it’s your owner looking to replace you with AI (make no mistake, when they say they’ll never drop live and local programming, they are not being honest) or pressure to follow a partisan path because the administration in charge wants that. None of this augurs well for this industry.
If breaking up the elitist element of newsrooms, the people who attend book release parties for each other and rely on access journalism, is a good thing (it is), punishing those who don’t follow the leader is not. It’s also punishing the public, who will end up being kept in the dark while grifters loot the government for all it’s worth. And because the warning signs were ignored, it’s too late now. It’s here.
Maybe you can put that education and experience to work where the jobs will be. You always wanted to work in the coal mines, didn’t you?
Perry Michael Simon is a weekly news media columnist for Barrett Media. He previously served as VP and Editor/News-Talk-Sports/Podcast for AllAccess.com. Prior to joining the industry trade publication, Perry spent years in radio working as a Program Director and Operations Manager for KLSX and KLYY in Los Angeles and New Jersey 101.5 in Trenton. He can be found on X (formerly Twitter) @PMSimon.
