What struck me most throughout these readings is the confluence of multiple forms of power working against the media, both from within and without. As Gibbs points out in her analysis of Musk’s earlier role in the Trump administration, “he is the richest man in the world and owns a major media platform. We have not seen that convergence of power, influence, and levers before.” For-profit media outlets owned by multi-billionaires is a marriage of financial, attention/media, and often political power that, as others have already pointed out, presents journalism with an unprecedented challenge. Coupled with other forms of power, like technological power or the power over particular platforms (like X and BlueSky), certain media outlets are forming information empires which play into the hands of the very seats of power they are meant to be checking and holding accountable.
At the same time as power is concentrated among the few, access is dispersed among the many, across a multitude of platforms, filtered extensively through non-professional voices (i.e. friends and family, as Gibbs says), more than ever before. It can be difficult to follow how various stories and events are connected when they are dispersed in such small, short-form quantities. This filtration leads to people being less “riveted” by journalism than they once were, less moved to act or shape their views according to what they are reading in the news. At the same time, media platforms without political, financial, and technological ties to the Trump administration (those which seem to be destroying themselves from within), are either being attacked by the Trump administration via lawsuits or are preemptively capitulating. Whether the lawsuits have merit, as Alison Durkee explains, seems to bear little influence over how it plays out. The attention grabber is the lawsuit itself, and the power that the Trump administration wields over journalists through the law. In an attention economy which leads people to stop absorbing information at the headline or soundbite, the content holds less import than its packaging, and that packaging can do little to reflect the nuance of any given story — or so some of these pieces suggest.
I also appreciated Rebecca Hamilton’s point that the Trump administration does not need to sue every “disobedient” outlet to make a point. Rather, as the administration is doing with universities and colleges, it can make an example out of a few to influence the actions of the many. At the same time, like Miriam, I would push back against the notion that the Trump administration as a whole is winning against the media. I was very compelled by Gibbs’ points about the importance of explanatory journalism during uncertain times, in which understanding systems of power and how they intertwine is more crucial than ever. It almost makes the act of investigation simpler: rather than uncovering information, we need only explain it and leverage the power of storytelling and good writers to do so.
I was left with the questions: How can we adapt to make our journalism more riveting? And is good writing, or skilled manipulation of any medium of expression for that matter, enough to do it? I’m also wondering how professional journalists themselves are experiencing these attacks, and whether it is leading to any form of journalistic nihilism within media communities. Do journalists still believe in their own ability to win public trust? Is public trust still attainable?
