The Future of the Media is What You Make It

“Can you believe it?” is a common question around the metaphorical water cooler at TRIGGERnometry these days. And for good reason. Our journey so far is as improbable as they come. Two unknown circuit comedians start a podcast in a room above a comedy club. They borrow a camera from a photographer, buy £50 microphones, and launch. Within three weeks, their producer quits due to ideological differences: she’s woke; they’re not. At this point their interviews average a few hundred views. The next producer lasts nearly twice as long and quits for a different reason: he likes to be paid. Soon after, the comedy club which let them use the room kicks them out, again for not being woke, in the middle of the pandemic. Five years later, they’re interviewing world leaders and averaging close to a million downloads an episode.

As remarkable as this story is, what makes it satisfying is not how far we’ve travelled from a lowly start. After all, every success story seems unlikely in retrospect. What’s special is that we’ve done our best to approach our new-found role as content creators in the “right way” and haven’t been crushed by the algorithm or the competition in the process.

The “right way” does not actually belong in quotation marks, but I use them to emphasise that in today’s media climate, our incentive structures have perverted our understanding of right and wrong. Now simply claiming that there is a right way of doing things seems grandiose, arrogant and presumptuous.

The slow-but-inevitable decline of mainstream media is, as I have written before, partly driven by technological change. Lowering the barrier to entry was always going to end the legacy media monopolies on information. But the emergence of new media challengers coincided* with the mainstream media showcasing its own corruption and inadequacy. Cathy Newman’s hostile interview with the then-emerging Jordan Peterson became an internet sensation because it revealed so clearly that much of journalism had ceased to be about truth-seeking. Instead it had become a tool to exert force against those seeking the truth. The treatment of dissenters against government authoritarianism during COVID, the deliberate lies such as the Russia Collusion Hoax and covering-up of Hunter Biden’s incriminating laptop, all served to further underscore the partisanship, bad faith, and corruption of the media.

As people often do when faced with an extreme they dislike, we proceeded to try out the opposite extreme. The problem, it was concluded, was not human behaviour, the corrupting effect of power, or the lack of competition. The problem was gatekeepers. This was a partial diagnosis at best, but it was felt by many that breaking open the oligarchic cabal, and democratising the marketplace of ideas, would lead to a better media environment. And, in some ways, it did. The market is brilliant at two things at least: driving down prices and increasing consumer choice. Today, the array of media publications available for free is astounding.

In the process, however, it was decided that the problem was curation itself. This is why much of new media is actively hostile to the idea of self-regulation, even at the level of the individual. Successful podcasters often reject the notion that they have any responsibility for the content they produce. To suggest otherwise risks being accused of calling for certain people to be no-platformed, cancelled and so on. These same people are, of course, highly selective about the guests they have on their shows, but the pretence that they are not is critical to maintaining their “free speech” credentials.

The impact of this is easiest to see in individuals. Tucker Carlson as a legacy media journalist at FOX News was controversial to be sure, but he had to free himself of the shackles of his gatekeepers to descend into actual lunacy, like claiming he’s been scratched by a demon.

Candace Owens spent her formative years doing excellent work at the Daily Wire pushing back against the progressive narrative on race in America. Today, free of the oppressive gatekeeping of her former employers, she spends her time focussing on whether Brigitte Macron is, in fact, a man.

This may sound like a critique of Carlson and Owens, but I’m afraid I’m actually doing something much more taboo: