The L.A. Times's imminent collapse has sparked many reactions, most of which seem to be celebration. This is, of course, something the L.A. Times can only blame itself for.
After all, it is part of the corporate media that has whittled away the people's trust over the years through blatant lies, horrific reporting, leftist propaganda, and endorsements for racism and sexism disguised as social justice. As I've written before, the media is no longer a place of journalism, it's pure political activism.
(READ: The Media Is a Den of Activists, Not Journalists)
But that doesn't mean, by any means, that journalism is dead. It's a sentiment I've seen quite a bit over the past few years. In a way, the phrase "journalism is dead" isn't necessarily wrong. The journalism of the past definitely is. The days when you could flip on the television and see a trusted face telling you the truth are dead. It's been dead for decades.
But journalism is, in my opinion, thriving in a way it never has in the history of mankind.
The age of the internet has brought forth a surge of journalism from the people in a way that was not possible beforehand. YouTube, Rumble, Instagram, and even TikTok are rife with people delivering reports and news in various ways all over the globe, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Is some of it complete bunk, unresearched nonsense, or flat-out lies? Absolutely. But the beautiful thing about this age is that the lie no longer can get around the world twice before the truth can get its pants on. The lie is often tackled swiftly and by multiple people, dragged out into the town square, and exposed as the lie it is.
Corporate media isn't just dying because it's been co-opted by activists, it's dying because it's a dead model that fewer and fewer people are finding uses for. Why turn on CNN or Fox News when you just as easily hit up X and check out what your favorite news personalities are talking about today? Gen Z is currently getting all its news from TikTok and Instagram where tomorrow's narrative war is taking place today.
In a way, this is a victory. While this new age of news paved the way for even more liars to come out of the woodwork, it finally gave the people wanting to report the truth a platform to do so, and in a variety of flavors. Arts, entertainment, politics, science, foreign affairs, and war, all have people who specialize in the subject reporting to you their opinions and takes.
We're probably living in something like a news golden age, we just can't see it because we're still lamenting the death of the media we used to know. And that's fair. The big stage played a crucial role in the advancement of humanity, and sadly, that stage didn't die when corporate journalism turned unforgivably corrupt, it's still being infected with liars and propagandists who still utilize that stage to great effect.
But its days are numbered. As news outlets continue to betray the trust of the people, more and more people tune out and turn to other means of garnering information. Soon, with the advancement of technology, AI, and more, the corporate media will become increasingly irrelevant from the news industry down to the entertainment industry.
(READ: The End Is Nigh for Hollywood)
I wouldn't anticipate a return to unbiased media of any kind. It will always exist, and as things become more personalized, bias will become more of a selling point as it technically already is today. But thanks to the amount of information that we have access to, a lie would not be able to live long in your head unless you wanted it to.
In truth, the corporate media, while still a massive problem, is becoming less and less a threat. The real threat now comes from those who wish to limit and control what information hits the internet.
