As IF Times

link:  https://www.naturalnews.com/2024-12-03-european-journalists-leaving-x-despise-free-speech.html

In 2006, a group of young people including Jack Dorsey started a little company named Twitter which was in fact only a side venture of their main project at the time.  Twitter was originally meant as a short messaging application allowing only a few characters to be sent, so the messages had to be brief and to the point.

The idea gained traction amongst early adopters and by 2013, after an IPO raising $1.8 billion, it was valued at $25 billion.  While that was an eye popping number, Elon Musk came along in 2022 and paid $44 billion to buy the entire company.  While numerous other social media messaging platforms have appeared since Twitter, now rebranded as X, this platform remains the most widely used and referred messaging platform in the world….not to mention the most influential. It is so influential that some authoritarian governments, such as Brazil’s, actually banned the use of X by their population.

Nowadays, X is the source for the most up to date information on every event worldwide since everyone who uses it can be a conduit for news. How quaint to think about the environment of a few decades ago when you had to wait for the 6 o’clock news.  Even professional journalists had to have an exposure to the platform to stay current with world affairs.  Of course, the flip side to the flood of current information was the proliferation of opinions on any given topic, many of which are considered controversial.

Until Elon Musk purchased and rebranded the platform, Twitter took it upon itself to censor posts which were not in line with the views of the owners.  Thus, as in most media companies, the views of conservatives were censored or just outright banned. Twitter fell into being an echo chamber for left leaning views as did all other social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

As Musk took control of the company, he reinstated the principle of free speech to the platform and thus, X truly regained its reputation as being the forum for the exchange of ideas, opinions and news.  To this day, users from across the ideological spectrum use X for their messages to the public, from celebrities, to the plain folk, from politicians to tyrants (often the same).

An odd thing happened since Musk’s takeover.  Now that X is a conduit for freedom of information and opinion, legions of once active social justice posters have publicly left the platform, including most recently over 300 European journalists.

If you think about it, why do journalists even exist?  Their notional job is to report news and events.  Currently, with eyeballs everywhere and with access to platforms such as X, we don’t need a middleman to tell us that a house is on fire.  We can observe that by ourselves.  Information is available, it’s current and it’s accurate.  Journalism these days consists of reporting on an event and supplementing it with commentaries entirely misleading or inaccurate.  Thus, a burning house will be characterized as a result of policies not friendly to climate change.  A couple of people seen sneezing at a venue constitutes evidence of a massive pandemic. It’s as if you ordered a meal at a restaurant and the waiter regales you with a narrative of how the food was artfully prepared by culturally sensitive craftsmen using only natural ingredients and socially acceptable techniques.  So, basically you get a free side dish of sanctimony that you didn’t ask for.

We don’t need middlemen to report the news. It reminds me of the old cliché about consultants; they look at your watch and tell you what time it is…for a fee.  The 300 ‘journalists’ quitting X are enacting a real life ‘Blazing Saddles’ moment, they are threatening their own livelihoods in protest of not being able to spin the news their way.  They’ve all but admitted that they no longer control the narrative, thus they are superfluous.  The past dozen years or so have exposed the majority of media to be fatally biased at best or are loyal mouthpieces of the governing establishment at worst. How often have we seen numerous media outlets use exactly the same phraseology to characterize an event… as if it were orchestrated?

We can say without exaggeration that Elon Musk has single-handedly restored free speech to the world.  He has allowed people to see that their views, though not blessed by the mainstream, are not unique; that many feel the way that they do.  This is an enormously powerful revelation and will have an enormous negative impact on authoritarian governments everywhere.

It’s interesting how far the world of mass media consumption has come.  Only a hundred years ago, if you wanted to be entertained, you had to dress up and go to the town theater to watch some kind of performance, typically including some singing, dancing and maybe some vaudevillian theater.   Then, radio came along and although it wasn’t the same visual experience as theater, you could listen to stories in the comfort of your living room, or parlor as it was probably known in those days.  This was a marvelous technical invention as it allowed listeners to create scenes in their own minds drawn from the sketches of audio only broadcasts.  The apex of influence of this medium was probably HG Well’s 1938 broadcast of The War Of The Worlds when people were led to believe that a Martian attack was under way.

But when Television came along after WW2, entertainment made another great leap forward.  No longer did people have to suffice with just audio, or with silent films at the movie theater, you could have voice and video in your own home.  However, the technology was still ahead of the content and despite classic pioneering shows including Milton Berle and Lucille Ball, most of the early offerings were rather banal.  Why? Well apparently most talented writers were working on real entertainment; Broadway plays and motion pictures.

But as in all things, the ability to make money from this new medium spawned an explosion in the amount and quality of content available on the small screen in the years to come.  Thus advertisers willing to pay to hawk their goods drew people into the business of putting out popular content.  During this time, the output of content fell to 3 major broadcasters who had a monopoly on all kinds of entertainment including news and sports.

This was pretty much the model for another 30 years until a guy named Ted Turner decided that audiences were willing to accept partitioned and specialized entertainment, thus heralding cable channels with narrow, specific fields of interest.  This shrunk the audience and influence of the big 3 networks.  To this day, you can still find a midget basket weaving channel or similar on your two hundred channel cable guide.  The next evolution was streaming.  This is essentially the same as cable channels except that you pay extra for ‘premium content’.  It’s like Only Fans, but non pornographic.  This caters to people who want to control their entertainment and on their schedules. It also contributed to the phenomenon of binge watching.

But the real 800 pound gorilla of entertainment today is Social media:  Instagram posts, Tik-Tok videos.  To the degree that most everyone on earth is able to have access to a mobile phone, they are also all consumers of Instagram or Tik Tok videos.  These are the platforms of our time. They are comprised of very short clips on any given topic.  For good or bad, these platforms truly shrink the expanse of the planet. Unlike the history of entertainment which has always been in the hands of the few, now EVERYONE is a content creator and the audience is truly vast.  Unlike all other avenues of entertainment, there are no boundaries for content, nor for that matter, taste. But these are not purely artistic and expressive works; these short videos are all now made with commercial intent.  As some may know, there are entire ‘farms’ in China which produce only short social media content for commercial use.

As with TV a couple of generations ago, everyone is looking for a way to capitalize on people’s appetite for amusement. Grand oeuvres won’t be found here, but you will find mostly themes of humor or prurience. And it’s lucrative. If somehow you are able to catch lightning in a bottle and acquire millions of view, you would be an internet sensation and all these views translates into real cash.  These ‘influencers’ make thousands or hundreds of thousands depending on the volume of clicks. They will benefit from affiliate marketing and branding.  Some of the top influencers are Cristiana Ronaldo and of course the Kardashians.   But even below that tier, many content makers can make very comfortable livings by simply putting out banal things and often simply following established formulas for content.  Who hasn’t scrolled through cute animal videos or food recipes?

Interestingly, the audience and sweet spot for marketing is and always has been to teenagers, both boys and girls as indicated by the people with the largest audiences.  But it’s also a powerful marketing tool for the entire spectrum of ages and there are probably no businesses today that don’t have a social media presence. Thus influential media has moved away from the gatekeepers of the past.  Now, anyone with a phone can influence the minds of millions as if they were stars. This is a great egalitarian platform.  So instead of professionals, people are essentially entertaining themselves!  But while this platform can reveal great minds when they otherwise would never have had the opportunity, something tells me it’s more like water…which always finds its lowest level.