Do certain important people, defined here as people some subset of journalists find compelling, owe the professional media class a seat at their table? The question is interesting. Politicians and business leaders were once forced to travel through the establishment media’s gateway to reach the masses, and as I’ve been writing for months social media influence at scale does pose unique and concerning challenges to society. Our world is different, now, and different doesn’t necessarily mean better. But no one ever engaged with the media because the media was especially moral, or True. People engaged with the media to reach the media’s audience. As an audience is no longer unique to the media, we are left with innate media goodness as a defense of a media discourse monopoly, which strikes me as… less than persuasive.
Source: A Little Chaos for a Treat – Pirate Wires (emphasis mine)
This guy is talking about the role of the media in a world where “the media” has become defined as “Twitter.” He’s correct, of course. Dominant people on Twitter don’t need the blue checkmark journalist class to reach their audience. They can do an end-run around their narrative-shaping opinion-making barricades. But, if you look closely, you might notice that this argument has reduced to: wealthy people don’t need the media to transmit their message any more. The allegedly egalitarian and supposedly unprejudiced modern social media platforms have simply become the direct line for billionaires to communicate directly to the public. They have become tools for the billionaire class, who, by nature of the inherent influence commensurate with their wealth, have the name recognition to bypass the platform’s gatekeepers. I don’t know what “the media” will look like in 5 or 10 years either, but traditional media’s future looks increasingly bleak, and they can thank the platform that they based their hope on 15 years ago.