A Lost World
Until the early 1990s, print journalism had relied on essentially the same technology ever since well before the American Revolution.
Newspapers, broadsheets, magazines, and books had all existed when the Constitution was written and their co-dependence was critical to how democracy in North America started.
The Constitution with its First Amendment guaranteeing our rights wasn’t broadcast and it wasn’t posted to the Web. It didn’t get tweeted or followed on Instagram. No one made a YouTube video about it. You couldn’t tell your friends on Facebook or TikTok about it. You also could not scroll through it on your cellphone or send a text about it.
Of course, earlier in the 20th century another form of electronic technology, radio, had disrupted the publishing industry, followed by a few decades its close cousin television, but the federal government had regulated both of those much more tightly than print — largely to minimize the potential for authoritarian abuse.
The initial regulatory structure for the airwaves was established in the 1920s and led by Herbert Hoover, who was the leading voice for how to preserve free speech while managing the anti-democratic threat posed by radio. The Communications Act of 1934 codified these principles and extended them to telecommunications.
But by the time web browsers came along in the last decade of the century, the government chose not to apply its broadcast regulatory system to the Internet for fear of stifling the growth of a lucrative new industry.
Congress debated what to do at length and the result was Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. That regulation essentially guaranteed the freedom of web-based companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple and (soon) Google, Facebook, and Twitter to host user-generated content without being liable for its accuracy or fairness.
This instantly put both print and broadcast media outlets at a major disadvantage, one from which they have never recovered. What it actually meant in practice is that anyone could now call himself or herself a journalist and attract an audience for their claims, however bizarre and undocumented they might be.
Millions of people quickly took advantage of that opportunity and new websites popped up everywhere. Among them were a handful, like Wired, Salon and Slate, that attempted to preserve the quality standards of traditional journalism during the transition to this new interactive digital world, with varying degrees of success. (I worked at both Salon and Wired during this period.)
But the traditional media and new media alike were quickly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of new information sources. Very rapidly, the existing world of media began to crumble into ruins.
Thirty years later, it’s fair to say we are paying the price for what’s been lost. Now we live in an information ocean polluted by conspiracy theories that help authoritarians and weaken democracy.
HEADLINES:
U.S. and Iran Exchange Fire Amid a Declared Truce (NYT)
The US and Iran are inching toward a short-term deal to end fighting (Reuters)
U.S. intelligence says Iran can outlast Trump’s Hormuz blockade for months (WP)
Trump’s abrupt U-turn on a plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz came after backlash from allies (NBC)
Rubio visits Vatican amid escalating tensions between Trump and Pope Leo (NPR)
Kash Patel under scrutiny over ‘FBI bourbon’ giveaways (Telegraph)
Inside a MAGA influencer’s turn against the right-wing machine (WP)
The Trump administration blitz that flooded Minnesota with immigration agents also dramatically slowed other federal investigations and prosecutions into an array of serious crimes, a Reuters review of federal court records found. (Reuters)
This Is Not the World Russia Wants (Foreign Affairs)
Russia is ramping up its attempts to kill opponents in Europe, intelligence officials say (AP)
Their student-loan lender said their debt was gone. The lawsuit said otherwise. (BI)
Countries worldwide scrambled to trace people who had left the cruise ship hit by a hantavirus outbreak before it got marooned off the coast of Cape Verde, to prevent further spread of the disease. (Reuters)
5 Takeaways From the California Governor Debate (NYT)
Ted Turner’s vision of news as global and continuous changed both the industry and society itself (AP)
He Couldn’t Land a Job Interview. Was AI to Blame? (Wired)
Elon Musk’s Confidante Is Cast as His Inside Source at OpenAI (NYT)
Worries about AI’s risks to humanity loom over trial (AP)
Customer Waits Until Barista Watching To Disarm Gunman (Onion)
We are witnessing an existential threat to journalism and local news. Opinions built on conspiracies and falsehoods are spewed into the ether without editors and oversight. Is this the future of a free press? Perhaps. But we cannot allow it to thrive without a moral code to publish the facts. We will all suffer because of it.
All sadly -- and perhaps fatally true, thanks to another element in the decline of fact-driven media. The rise of social networks and non-stop intensive data mining obliterated the financing structure of print publications, which depended heavily on advertising revenues. The single most important source of income for nearly every daily newspaper in the United States before 2008 or so was classified ads: the brief notices that accounted for everything from used car sales and apartment rentals to babysitter and dog walking services. They raked in huge profits at minimal staff and office space costs. Gone forever now, along with the splashy full-page department store ads from the likes of Macy's and the Emporium.