Follow the Leader

There is an interesting tension between the ideas that media outlets are powerful purveyors of information such that they become "thought leaders" to their audiences, and the idea that they are businesses in a competitive industry, and as such, need to cater to their customers' tastes and desires if they are going to stay afloat.

A lot of the details that came out in US Dominion, Inc., Dominion Voting Systems, Inc., and Dominion Voting Systems Corporation v. Fox Corporation point to the later. Which makes sense; I still think that Brooke Gladstone was correct in her assessment that it's unprofitable for news outlets to ignore their audience's emotions, assumptions and values.

Of course, the problem that one has as a news outlet is that it's unprofitable to openly acknowledge or have it suspected that one is directly responding to audience emotions, assumptions and values. "Pandering for profit" is just like any other form of pandering; it's ineffective when people start to believe that it's happening. It's just like any other situation in which someone is being told something that they want to hear; they have to believe that the person speaking to them more or less believes what they are saying. Otherwise, they may easily come to feel that they are on the receiving end of an attempt to manipulate them.

And that can be a fine line to walk.

Fox News has learned, I think, what a number of people who thought themselves important in the conservative world have learned. Namely, that they aren't the people who are leading the parade; they're just the ones in front. I'm not sure of the degree to which this will be understood by the American Left, which has its own strain of conspiratorial thinking centered around powerful figures in smoke-filled rooms who mislead people for selfish and antidemocratic ends.

But I think the understanding of "the media" as a business is an important one, whether it replaces, or lives side-by-side with the concept of media as thought leaders. So I'd like to see it catch on this time.