On the dangers of audience capture in new - and old - media

And what makes Unreported Truths different (hint: it's you - and I hope you will agree and support this collective effort).

If you like everything I write, I’m doing something wrong.

I try not to think too much about the media landscape (actual journalism is much more interesting). But your response to Wednesday’s piece about the anti-ICE protests struck me.

I suggested comparing them to civil rights protests is foolish. A lot of you liked that take. But I ended the piece by suggesting the Trump Administration should deescalate rather than try to break the protests. A lot of you didn’t like that take.

In truth, I didn’t have to offer a prescription. I knew arguing against escalation would be unpopular. I could have kept my mouth shut. In a Substack this week, journalist Scott Greer argued that “the new media environment is audience-led.” Greer wrote:

Independent content creators… are running businesses and aim to please customers. Their viewpoints naturally follow from this mindset… Influencers instantly learn what their audience thinks of their content through replies and comments. They can even “ratio” a take they hate in just a few minutes. Influencers adjust accordingly and rarely ever go against their audience.

—

(Subscribe BECAUSE Unreported Truths is different - I’m not afraid to challenge you!)

—

Sometimes these incentives can lead writers or podcasters to odd places, as with Candace Owens, who has spent months blaming everyone but the actual alleged killer for Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

Owens is behaving so oddly that I wondered if she is suffering a psychotic break, though someone who has interacted with her recently told me she is not. As the great German Substacker Eugyppius argued in a piece about Owens last month:

The most successful social media personalities are experts at two things. To sell ads and conclude lucrative sponsorship deals, they must command and hold your attention. To expand their own reach, they must also drive engagement with their own content.

Eugyppius persuasively makes the case that Owens has found a vast audience that cares much less whether her stories are true than whether they are open-ended and entertaining, like a soap opera.

—

It’s not just independent podcasters or Substackers who try to play to their audiences.

On Tuesday, this graphic went viral on X:

—

Meanwhile, on the same day as the CNN graphic, People magazine referred to Scott Adams, a Trump supporter and outspoken conservative, as “Disgraced” in the headline of his obituary:

—

So much for not speaking ill of the dead.

The legacy media audience — what remains of it — leans even further left than the Substack and podcasting audience leans right.

And the people working for those outlets know exactly what their readers and viewers want to hear. Not just in headlines, either.

For over a decade, the New York Times, Washington Post, and other top legacy media outlets have presented a narrative about violence in America that is fundamentally false, because the truth that black men commit a vastly disproportionate share of violence is too painful for their audience to accept. Instead they focus almost exclusively on mass shootings and police violence against African-Americans.

—

I was trained as a journalist first and foremost. Facts first. And I will always try to give you the truth as accurately as again. In this media environment, I expect you also want a heavy dollop of analysis and opinion from me, and I aim to provide it (along with punchy writing).

But I want to believe, and I do believe, that I have the privilege of writing for a smart and sophisticated audience, that you don’t come to me just to hear takes that will have you nodding along all the time. And when I’m wrong — for example, my overly cautious take on the June attacks on Iran’s missile program — I will tell you.

Now a quick ask. If this is the kind of writing you want, I hope you will support me and Unreported Truths. No discount today, no special offer, just the chance to stand for truly independent journalism and analysis.

I will keep challenging myself and you either way. I don’t know how else to write. But I’d love to have you on board.

—

(So get on board!)

—

(Wednesday’s piece, if you missed it)