Last week the news media went into a frenzy following the car’s owners. Los Angeles Times And Washington Post prevented each newspaper’s editorial boards from formally endorsing Kamala Harris for president. Times The editor-in-chief resigned in protest. Two other members of the editorial board followed his lead. Two Washington Post Columnists also resigned to signal their disapproval of the move, and many readers of both publications reportedly canceled their subscriptions in response.

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, journalists famous for reporting on Watergate while working in Washington Washington Postpublished a expression They say they are disappointed. Former editor-in-chief Martin Baron in the name The decision is “cowardice whose loss is democracy”. Nineteen Washington Post columnists signed column He called the lack of approval a “terrible mistake”. And the unions of both publications launched expressions expression They are concerned about such a move.

The widely expressed concern is that we are just days away from a consequential election in which one of the candidates poses a major threat to democracy. The rest of the media thinks the billionaires who own each outlet are “preemptively self-censoring” themselves to avoid offending Donald Trump. This “self-censorship,” then, was said to make Trump more likely to be elected.

It is worth explaining the assumptions underlying these concerns. The first and perhaps most stupid thought was, Los Angeles Times or Washington Post This will be an important factor in the election. The readership of both newspapers is already crooked heavily Democrat. And it’s no secret to those who spend as little as thirty seconds scrolling through pages. editorial headlines that the newspapers’ editors supported Harris over Trump and why.

A quick look at the opinions and coverage in both newspapers is enough to dispel the notion that executives at either publication are concerned about pleasing Trump. Even in the “hard news” segments, Trump is framed as a deranged fascist trying to destroy the country to feed his fragile ego, while Harris is a serious, tough, problem-solving public servant who makes few tactical moves at worst. Mistakes on the campaign trail. No honest observer can seriously say that these newspapers “remained silent” about this election.

First of all, the intensity of the meltdown we’re seeing from media figures both inside and outside these two publications reveals just how oblivious much of the established media is to its own importance.

there was one timeDuring the mid-to-late 1800s, the public got almost all its news from newspapers. It is hard to overstate how much power was placed in the hands of the printers, and later the editors and managers, who produced these papers.

As we live our lives, we are constantly building and improving an internal model of reality that will help us act better to achieve the outcomes we desire. Much of this model is created from our own experiences or the experiences of our friends and families, and these are shared with us through advice and stories. We rely on the media to understand entire parts of the world that exist outside the experience of ourselves and those we know personally. In the nineteenth century, media consisted almost entirely of books, pamphlets, and newspapers.

Because our internal models of reality are indistinguishable from reality itself, and newspapers are the only source of information about current events, newspaper editors have exercised a tremendous amount of control over how the population views the world. Their near monopoly on public discourse about current events has given them too much power when analyzing or approving the actions of politicians.

However, as other forms of media gained traction, the dominance of newspapers began to decline. This started with magazines, the first truly national news source, and really accelerated with the rise of radio and television news. But the high cost of starting a new broadcast and the early government takeover of the airwaves has left control over the information space mostly in the hands of a small, establishment-friendly group.

HE changed With the emergence of internet blogs in the 1990s. Suddenly anyone with an internet connection could reach readers without filters, editors, or domain restrictions. It wasn’t very obvious at first, but with this seemingly innocuous development, the institution’s monopoly on the information field was shattered forever.

Now, thirty years later, results It is much more difficult to ignore such a change. From Occupy Wall Street to the Tea Party, from Ron Paul and later Donald Trump’s domestic campaigns to the Arab Spring and Brexit’s move abroad, the internet has changed the world. Not only because it allows people to see and hear opposing views, but because it shows people that those views are popular.

In such a close election, neither candidate could ignore the new reality in which we find ourselves. Both Harris and Trump have appeared on popular podcasts, and Trump has made such appearances a central part of his campaign. Last week Trump sat for three hours argument on the Joe Rogan Experience, which is technically by far the most watched talk show in the world.

Trump’s appearance on Rogan has been viewed almost forty million times on YouTube alone (Spotify and Apple Podcasts do not release download figures, but both account for a large portion of Rogan’s listeners, so the total number is likely much higher.) Interview Kamala Harris’s latest interview with Fox News, celebrated as her last interview with 8 million viewers, is very moving. highest rated Interview about the 2024 elections. The Internet is no longer a sideshow in our media landscape. This is the main stage.

So it’s absurd to see an absolute meltdown over whether two newspapers publish official support for either candidate. The panic can only be understood as a symptom of the legacy media’s inability or unwillingness to confront the fact that they are no longer the main force influencing and controlling how the public sees the world.

The establishment press still continues to pose a serious threat with the various options it offers. roads Them distort Our perceptions of truth are politicallysuitable For them and their friends in government. But last week’s hysteria over the withdrawal of editorial approvals shows that many are still overly focused on some media practices that are largely irrelevant today. And this is a reason for optimism.