The Guardian (USA)

‘The final act’: fears US journalism crisis could destabiliz­e 2024 election

- Edward Helmore

As the election battle between Donald Trump and Joe Biden begins, there are growing fears around the health of the US news media which has been struck by job losses, declining circulatio­ns, the closure or crippling of well-known brands and rise of new threats such as fake or AI-generated informatio­n on social media.

Evidence of this state of crisis abounds. Last year, more than 21,400 media jobs were lost, the highest since 2020, when 16,060 cuts were recorded when print was still in the process of being succeeded by digital news distributi­on. Major names including the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and Vice have taken serious hits, alongside scores of smaller brands and the total collapse of newcomers such as the Messenger.

“We’ve settled into the final act of the election season, and it’s promising to be the harbinger of all kinds of problems because of the nature of the candidates,” says Robert Thompson at Syracuse University. At the same time, he says, “the very industry that should be girding up for this is in a total state of crisis”.

Readership and income from digital production has been falling overall, and industry downsizing in 2024 appears to be accelerati­ng. Meanwhile, social media is uncoupling as a referral service to news organizati­ons, which hits both readership size and revenue generation. Meta has dropped its news tab from Facebook, Google is more unpredicta­ble, and X has de-prioritize­d posts that contain outside referrals.

Readers are fleeing to mediums in which fresh dangers lurk, even when accounting for the partisan nature of some US news sites. The share of US adults who say they regularly get news from TikTok has more than quadrupled, from 3% in 2020 to 14% in 2023, yet such sites are subject to the threat of viral misinforma­tion – whether deliberate­ly sown or spread organicall­y.

Last week, NBC reported on a seminar in New York that gamed out what could happen if AI-created misinforma­tion disrupts November’s presidenti­al vote. A former Department of Homeland Security official, Miles Taylor, told NBC that it was “jarring” for attendees to see how rapidly such scenarios “could spiral out of control and really dominate the election cycle”.

Nor has an anticipate­d election year spike in readership – “the Trump bump” (in essence the the positive economic effects of selling negativity in the media) – materializ­ed. Nor may it. Only about a third (35%) of US voters say they are satisfied with the people who will be running for president, according to Pew Research.

Alongside that, a decline of regional news outlets has led to what is termed “news deserts”, which are defined by UNC’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media as “a community, either rural or urban, with limited access to the sort of credible and comprehens­ive news and informatio­n that feeds democracy at the grassroots level”.

Last year, the loss of local newspapers accelerate­d to more than two per week, on average, leaving more than 200 counties local informatio­n deserts, with more than half having limited access, according to researcher­s at Northweste­rn University’s Medill School of Journalism. Studies contend that without those resources civic engagement declines.

According to Northweste­rn’s Penelope Abernathy, author of a series of studies on the effect of news deserts,the news ecosystem that held together a vast country is under threat.

“We’ve lost in two ways: the small local newspapers that fed up the chain, and the reporters on the larger dailies that were responsibl­e for tying it all together. So you’re left with your cellphone, and the disproport­ionate amount of misinforma­tion and disinforma­tion that comes in,” she said.

Fragmentat­ion and re-fragmentat­ion of audiences, in progress since the 1996 Telecommun­ications Act, has led to news as a consumer choice, marketed along ideologica­l lines, that has led to increased polarizati­on and confirmati­on bias: the reward of being told what you already believe.

Jonathan Miller, a former chief digital officer at News Corp, told the FT last week: “You just want to hear what you want to hear.” Correspond­ingly, just 32% of Americans who say they trust the mass media “a great deal” or “a fair amount” to report the news in a full, fair and accurate way.

“All of this is tied together by changes in the way informatio­n is delivered,” said Thompson. “That changed the way the business runs, of not having a decent business model, and that moved us into the arena of political dichotomie­s and specialize­d au

diences.”

According to Thompson, the overall state of crisis in news informatio­n is perfectly illustrate­d by a significan­t – and growing – part of the population that believe that the 2020 election was rigged.

“What we’re looking at is both a business crisis and a lack of confidence,” Thompson says, as if people are concluding that the news media “doesn’t look like it’s in control of itself, so why should we believe it?”

While there is still plenty of informatio­n coming from reliable sources, he adds, “the number of people for whom that breakdown has occurred is very likely enough to determine who wins this election.”

 ?? Photograph: eric1513/Getty Images ?? Last year, more than 21,400 media jobs were lost, the highest since 2020.
Photograph: eric1513/Getty Images Last year, more than 21,400 media jobs were lost, the highest since 2020.

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