The rise of alternative media outlets and 'fake news' marks a paradigm shift

Old school media outlets like the New York Times are struggling to maintain their reputation

The proliferation of new media sources and personalities is both promising and dangerous

This new, diverse media landscape is changing how every outlet conveys its views to the world

By Ty Joplin

On May 8th, The New York Times published an in-depth feature about the emergence of the so-called ‘Intellectual Dark Web.’ The piece showcased figures like Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro and Sam Harris; thinkers and platformers who the piece claim have been shunned by old school media outlets such as the New York Times.

Disregarding the obvious tension in the fact that the New York Times itself published the feature and has made a habit of hiring ‘alternative’ like climate change deniers and new-school conservatives, the piece served to officiate the emergence of a new media landscape; one that is highly individualized, personality-driven, crowd-sourced and more obviously ideological than ever.

Those considered to be part of ‘new media’ have been working for years, but have only recently been given the platforms and audiences they have been working towards developing. Their emergence has also coincided with the so-called ‘post-truth’ era, where liars and ideologues can spout falsehoods with impunity and ‘alternative’ news sources can produce fake stories riddled with errors to further a particular worldview. Most of their audience seem to be disaffected individuals who have lost faith in traditional media institutions.

This new media landscape is subtly altering the way people understand politics and the world around them: it is in equal shares a profound democratic experiment in analyzing the world around us and a dangerously uncontrolled explosion of ideological dogmas. Whether it is threatening or promising relies almost entirely on the individual reader.

Post Truth and the Proliferation of Alternative News

The so-called ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ is a euphemism used by the New York Times to describe the vast array of media outlets involved in a non-traditional type of reporting and discussion.

From Joe Rogan’s streamed show and podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, to twitch streams of millennials breaking down and sharing news stories relevant to their lives, such as Philip DeFranco, web-based commentators are finding new way platforms their viewpoints.

This ‘dark web’ also includes the well-oiled machinery of Alex Jones’ conspiracy theory touting InfoWars and Mike Cernovich, whose championing of the PizzaGate conspiracy led a gunman to enter a pizza shop near Washington D.C. Cernovich and others claimed the pizza restaurant had a basement where Hillary Clinton and an associate of hers hosted a child sex slavery ring.

When it turned out that there was no child sex slavery ring run by powerful Democrats, Cernovich quietly dropped the conspiracy theory and continues to enjoy a loyal audience

“Social networking has given a whole load of people and ideas new platforms,” Michael Wendling, an editor at BBC and author of the new book “Alt-Right: From 4chan to the White House,” told Al Bawaba.

Mike Cernovich discussing the ‘truth’ of the PizzaGate conspiracy theory

Many commentators like Mike Cernovich are funded by Patreon, a platform whereby users can subscribe to a person’s work by paying a certain amount monthly. Journalists like Tim Pool, a self-described ‘center-left libertarian,’ and Iona Craig, an award-winning investigative reporter focused on Yemen, depend on their Patreon revenue to continue their work.

This has simultaneously eroded the authority of establishment media institutions like The New York Times or The Economist to dominate the distribution and analysis of the world, while opening up that space to individuals who can be funded independently.

This also makes it harder to check between good and bad journalism, since those who can propagate conspiracy theories, like Cernovich and Jones, can continue to do so with impunity while in the past they’d likely be fired and enter into a kind of media oblivion. Now, many of their subscribers and viewers may even believe the conspiracy and disregard other sources’ attempts to prove them wrong.

Another thing incentivizing the rise of alternative news sources is the way social media platforms code their algorithms to connect individuals: “if you watch a 9/11 conspiracy video on YouTube, YouTube will serve you up another 9/11 conspiracy video,” Wendling continued.

“The algorithm will not seek to give you balanced viewpoints. So the audience atomises. Extreme and emotional content is also more engaging, and thus social media companies looking to boost engagement will find that they’re also boosting that kind of stuff.”

This isn’t necessarily a new development: people have always sought out media sources that corroborate their worldviews. But social media platforms are making that search as easy and fast as possible.

Facebook’s Problem with Platforming Terrorism

(Shutterstock)

One horrifying example of the way social media functions as a kind of ‘chaotic neutral’ in connecting people to ideas and others who agree with them, is the revelation that Facebook was accidentally creating networks of extremists.

According to a bombshell report, “Researchers, who analysed the Facebook activities of a thousand ISIL supporters in 96 countries, discovered users with radical Islamist sympathies were routinely introduced to one another through the popular 'suggested friends' feature.”

One researcher, Gregory Waters, discovered the phenomenon when he befriended an ISIS sympathizer only to have dozens of others appear as ‘suggested friends.’

"Facebook, in their desire to connect as many people as possible have inadvertently created a system which helps connect extremists and terrorists,” said another researcher for the Counter Extremism Project, Robert Postings.

Facebook was already in trouble thanks to their website becoming an amplifier for users to voice support for the genocide of the Rohingya people in Myanmar.

The controversies surrounding Facebook are a symptom of the increasing atomization of media consumption: individuals are able to exist in niche spaces, out of reach from the traditional news outlets. From there, their choices and ideological affiliations are expressed and re-affirmed by a massive network of like-minded people.

Who is Fake News?

The New York Times building in New York City (Shutterstock)

The New York Times piece claims that many within the ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ are genuinely involved in truth seeking, but one click in the wrong direction will show viewers the likes of Alex Jones or Mike Cernovich, who are doubtless not so much ‘truth seekers’ as they are shameless conspiracy theorists.

This framing gives the impression that there is a binary between those vanguards for truth and the villains of the ‘post-truth’ era, who feed lies to the public and politicians alike, allowing the proliferation of falsehoods and conspiracies.

But this binary is too simple: there have always been shades of ideological dogmatism that has affected what one sees to be ‘truth.’ Newer outlets now are just more forthcoming about their biases and convictions.

“The question of truth is always in ‘crisis’ somewhere,” Jerry Miller, a professor of philosophy at Haverford College said to Al Bawaba. “And I don't know whether consensus--as opposed to a civil dissensus--is necessarily the goal.”

Historically, many within the liberal establishment, often regarded as the pantheons of truth, have been blind to their own ideological convictions.

“New Yorkers have long arrogated truth to themselves, even against the west coast. Yet their pride in being parochial (never traveling west of the Delaware, 'flyover states,' etc) and the global wealth that sustains the city has made them deeply out of touch with the experiences, and thus truth, outside of Manhattan,” Miller stated.

“The old fashioned, liberal elitism of New York has morphed into a hermetic time capsule of privilege and self-aggrandizement.”

So as those within the New York elite mourn the death of truth, those whose viewpoints were roundly discredited are now filling up social media feeds to convey their own ‘truth.’

In trying to adapt to this new landscape, outlets like the New York Times and The Atlantic have begun hiring voices they think can serve as a bridge between themselves and the disillusioned public. One problem is that now they are in the business of platforming ‘fake news’ propagators.

Megan McArdle was hired from Bloomberg to become a writer for The Washington Post. McArdle infamously wrote that policy makers should think twice before enacting regulations to prevent more tragedies like the Grenfell Tower fire, which killed 71 people, because any regulation may kill more than they save.

The New York Times has kept climate change denier Bret Stephens on their payroll as a columnist.

The Atlantic also hired Kevin Williamson despite knowing that he thought women who get abortions should be hung. When it became undeniable that he genuinely believed they should die, he was fired.

This trend of hiring ‘outside’ voices has obfuscated the divide between the traditional and alternative media, as the more established outlets seek to absorb other viewpoints into their own structure.

This makes the question of ‘who is fake news’ more difficult to answer.

The Dangers of the New Media Landscape

(Rami Khoury/Al Bawaba)

“There is a great advantage in having a diversity of points of view,” Lee McIntyre, a research fellow at Boston University and author of the book “Post-Truth,” said to Al Bawaba.

The flattening out of the media landscape when there was once megalithic pillars in The New York Times and company, has simultaneously allowed fake news to proliferate and a diversity of viewpoints to be heard.

“But the bottom line in any journalistic endeavor should be fealty to the truth,” said McIntyre.

McIntyre argued that ground rules of “disclosure of conflict of interests, checking facts, double sourcing,” and so on remain paramount in trying to determine who is and is not rigorous; who is and is not manipulating news developments to further their agenda.

Some media sources, new and old, crowd or corporate funded, are rediscovering the fundamentals of rigorous analysis. This can make the difference between those that contribute to the democratization of media, as organizations like Bellingcat do, and those that credance to authoritarian strongmen's touting of falsehoods.

This isn't to say that 'new media' outlets ought to hide their ideological leanings either: many have found success precisely in the fact that they are forthcoming with how they view the world. Outlets like The Intercept and Jacobin unapologetically sell themselves to a leftist or liberal audience. The Daily Wire, led by the polarizing public figure Ben Shapiro, represents a similarly unapologetic right-wing audience.

“I tend to hear ‘post-truth’ used by people who claim that facts no longer matter,” Wendling continued.

“But I don’t think that people, and I mean that in the broadest sense, simply disregard facts or pick their own version of the truth. They may be misinformed, or fall to any number of cognitive errors, but that’s nothing new. Most people want to get to the facts, even if social media has made it harder for people to agree on some sort of universal truth – which I’m unsure ever existed anyway.”

Perhaps the rise of 'new media' began when veil of universalism came crashing down in the 2016 Presidential Election, when it became clear the New York Times and others not only lacked a crystal ball but furthered a worldview so myopic that it could not have forseen its own obsolescence.