The last couple of weeks have been a blur of headlines concerning the media. Don Lemon fired from CNN. The most popular show on Fox cancelled. CNBC anchor Hadley Gamble leaves the network after her sexual harassment claim sees the CEO get the boot. Tucker Carlson takes his show to Twitter. Then there was this one: George Soros buys Vice Media.
I’m no fan of George (and neither are the Chinese or Hungary). He seems to be constantly funding campaigns that are detrimental to freedom, liberty, and the rule of law. So when I see him spending $590 million in an attempt to retain control of a narrative generating machine, I won’t interrupt him with the facts. $590M is a drop in the bucket to a guy like Soros ($8.6B net worth) but it is a start. Nobody goes bankrupt all at once (unless you trade options).
George doesn’t want to lose the narrative. As a student of history, I know that communists need control of the media in order to delude the masses. A prime example is Castro and Che in Cuba. These two essentially failed upwards. Their early attempts at “revolution” were trounced. It wasn’t until they regularly broadcasted their own pirate radio news that they gained support. They used their media broadcasts to lie to the public about military victories that never happened which demoralized the opposition and strengthened their support. George knows the power that media plays in shaping the opinions of the masses and he is losing his edge. At the same time, we now have Tucker Carlson, (possibly the most widely followed media figure) teaming up with Twitter to bring his content straight to the masses without care of advertisers. To me, the writing is on the wall.
This is a continuation of the new media (the internet) disrupting the old media (newspapers and tv). This has been a process. Just like going bankrupt, it starts slowly then gains steam. We are now seeing this process happen at a much faster clip. Tom Luongo and Dexter White had a recent podcast where they called it, “the death of the time slot”. I find that name very fitting. We no longer need to wait for the 5 o’clock news to know what is going on in the world. I would argue that Twitter and Substack should be considered the modern press. I find more news worthy stories published on these platforms every day. Welcome to the future.
This was a really great read!