A week ago Jeff Bezos published an op-ed suggesting the public does not trust the press and they risk irrelevance if they don't change course. The press, including people at his org, were mostly dismissive and instead accused him of corrupt motives. I think last night showed they are much farther on the path toward irrelevance than he (& even most of us) suspected and it was all their own doing. The refusal to engage in any self-reflection and the justifications for constant activism in place of serving their designated and critical role of properly informing the public has cost major news orgs all their credibility. So now they are directly competing with podcasts and social media blog posts because their brands, which is what gave them an edge, have become worthless. And even now you can see the complaint is that their audience has access to other sources of information instead of any reflection on why they no longer have any trust advantage over those other sources. They think the solution is to subject everyone else to their preferred bubble instead of earning back trust. This will only get worse because there is no evidence of a desire to change. The good people at these organizations that try to do the right thing are consistently overshadowed and those leading them refuse to intervene. That's just the reality of where we are.
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