I was briefly trapped, once, in Walter Cronkite’s closet. It was 2007, a couple of years before he died. The grand news anchor had been given an office for life at the top of the CBS building in New York, and I had gone to talk to him about the fate of the media. It was not terribly interesting — a bit like interviewing a Prussian cavalry officer about drone warfare.
But we parted on good company and I withdrew, with suitable obsequiousness, through what I thought was the door. Straight into his walk-in closet. When I sheepishly emerged, he was asleep.
Back then there was certainly a somnolence about the mainstream US media, a resting-on-laurels patrician grandeur — walk-in closets for the anchors, self-regarding “journalism studies” courses for the youngsters. It all suggested that, in the internet age, they didn’t know what was about to hit them.
Well, it’s hit them now. Right between the eyes. Both the Fox and CNN news channels are about to be displaced by Newsmax (to the right) and MSNBC (to the left). Not that it matters too much. Today, the traditional networks are largely watched by people whose hands shake too much to change the channel when the adverts come on for Viagra or dentures.
In fact, according to Pew research, more than half of Americans get some or most of their news from social media, mainly Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. And as Pew points out, this new-age media isn’t particularly helpful: Americans who turn to social media for political news are not only “less aware and knowledgeable about a wide range of events and issues”, but they are also “more likely than other Americans to have heard about a number of false or unproven claims”.
Perhaps the biggest of those claims is that Donald Trump won the election. Certainly large numbers of Americans believe it: around 32% according to a recent CNN poll. Meanwhile, YouGov reports that one in five voters — and 45% of Republicans — supported the storming of the Capitol.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
Subscribe