Legacy media must compete against a choose-your-own-adventure reality.
By Charlie Warzel November 8, 2024, 4:03 PM ET
The Media's Identity Crisis - The Atlantic
Illustration by Katie Martin
“You are the media now.”
That’s the message that began to cohere among right-wing influencers shortly after Donald Trump won the election this week.
Elon Musk first posted the phrase, and others followed.
“The legacy media is dead. Hollywood is done. Truth telling is in. No more complaining about the media,” the right-wing activist James O’Keefe posted shortly after.
“You are the media.”
- It’s a particularly effective message for Musk, who spent $44 billion to purchase a communications platform that he has harnessed to undermine existing media institutions and directly support Trump’s campaign.
- QAnon devotees also know the phrase as a rallying cry, an invitation to participate in a particular kind of citizen “journalism” that involves just asking questions and making stuff up altogether.
A defining quality of this election cycle has been that few people seem to be able to agree on who constitutes “the media,” what their role ought to be, or even how much influence they have in 2024.
Based on Trump and Kamala Harris’s appearances on various shows—and especially Trump and J. D. Vance’s late-race interviews with Joe Rogan, which culminated in the popular host’s endorsement—some have argued that this was the “podcast election.” But there’s broad confusion over what actually moves the needle.
Is the press the bulwark against fascism, or is it ignored by a meaningful percentage of the country?
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