Welcome to ‘Post-Journalism’: How Polarization Became the Business Model. With host Jan Jekielek and guest Martin Gurri (10/08/24, podcast 58 min)
For those wondering why the news is the way it is, this episode explores the radical transformation of the media and information ecosystems.
Cuban born former CIA media analyst Martin Gurri lived under two Cuban dictators before coming to the US as a child — so he (unlike those accusing Trump of being a dictator) understands real dictators. Gurri writes the monthly “Welcome to The Fifth Wave” column on Substack (discoursemagazine.com/p…) and wrote the book “The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium” (amazon.com/Revolt-Publi…).
Quotable quotes from Mr. Gurri’s interview:
Post-journalism essentially is the idea that journalism commodifies polarization.
Instead of seeking objectivity and broad appeal to the general public, media seek to become a refuge for a subset of the population: “a temple of ideology” for people who share the same worldview.
If you take the Russia story where [Trump] was supposed to have been basically Vladimir Putin’s agent, [the New York Times] published at least 3,000 (by my estimate) stories on Trump being manipulated by the Russians. … They got millions and millions of subscribers because of that.
