I agree in a broad sense but I also think folks who read this solely as “legacy media has failed teens” are missing the role of tech and social giants in undermining the business model and replacing professional journalism with addictive attention-based platforms powered by essentially free labor.
I was involved in Knight-Ridder’s 25/43 project back in the very early 1990s. We already knew all media, legacy or otherwise, was failing — or, more exactly, that society was failing our teens and 20somethings, who are now in their 40s and 50s and continuing the trend of ignoring media.
In the 1970s and 1980s, newspapers were used in classrooms. They were used to explain current events, to examine media objectivity, and to understand the world. News broadcasts were also part of the curriculum. It was expected families would subscribe to the newspaper and if they couldn’t
afford it the school would offer the newspaper and/or pay for the subscription. It was imperative that all children in elementary, junior high and high school read — or at least were aware of — the newspaper. But Reagan started a war on eduction that persists, and the Republican arsenal
far outgunned the weapons of media companies — though it was their fault, too. They were going on buying and merging sprees, wasting money, and mismanaging themselves. This is stuff I was learning about when being trained as an editor and reporter in the 1980s. We’ve known this
for decades. So the blame doesn’t rest ENTIRELY on the shoulders of media, and especially not on reporters’ and editors’, rather on the world as a whole — a government that disdained the media beginning in the 1970s, oblivious media owners, and parents and schools that devalued news media.
Now exacerbated by tech companies that have a vested interest in distracting youth (and all ages, really) with “content” that is very much not NEWS … and an administration, again, that shares those values.
Also unless I'm missing something the decline in trust is for journalists and journalism, not just "legacy media" right? So even new media that employs professional journalists are implicated here.
oh yes, entirely agree. i just couldn’t handle continuing to be screamed at by people telling me the media is bad and teens are the only smart ones lol.
I'm spitballing,b ut Ireally think it's b/c when I was a teen, the news was still considered a subject "for adults." Newspapers, mags, 60 mins, 20/20. We didn't find out about the world until we actively sought it out and then gravitated to sources we (thought) we could trust.
My 11 and 15 year old nephew/niece know way more about current events than I did at the same age, and ofc they're getting it thru social media. So the idea of the news being something serious and adult doesn't form a part of their consciousness. It's flattened out into content.
And then when whatever remnants of serious reporting are left fail, their beliefs are reaffirmed: it's all content. So why not listen to whatever news influencer they've grown up on and become inculcated to. Again, this is top of my head stuff. I could be totally wrong!
This all tracks for me, for whatever that's worth. I think it's a smart insight
But also teens are living in more diverse communities, so baked in media biases against communities of color are more obvious to them. Not to mention the corporate media’s normalization of Trump has happened in their formative years.