Roughly halfway through my half-century in journalism, a revolutionary technological development disrupted the entire media world in unprecedented ways. Until the early 1990s, print journalism had relied on essentially the same technology ever since well before the American Revolution.
Newspapers, broadsheets, magazines, and books had all existed when the Constitution was written and their co-dependence was critical to how democracy in North America evolved.
The Constitution with its First Amendment guaranteeing our rights as the press wasn’t broadcast and it wasn’t posted to the Web. It didn’t get tweeted or followed on Instagram. No one made a YouTube video about it. You couldn’t tell your friends on Facebook or TikTok about it. You also could not scroll through it on your cellphone, send a text about it, or “own” a copy as an NFT.
It’s true that earlier in the 20th century, another form of electronic technology, radio, had disrupted the publishing industry, followed by a few decades its close cousin television, but the federal government had regulated both of those much more tightly than print — largely to minimize the potential for authoritarian abuse.
The initial regulatory structure for the airwaves was established in the 1920s and led by Herbert Hoover, who was the leading voice for how to preserve free speech while managing the anti-democratic threat posed by radio. The Communications Act of 1934 codified these principles and extended them to telecommunications.
But by the time web browsers came along in the last decade of the century, the traditional regulatory structure could not be reasonably extended to the Internet without stifling the growth of a lucrative new industry.
Congress debated what to do and the result was Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. That regulation essentially guaranteed the freedom of web-based companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple and (soon) Google, Facebook, and Twitter to host user-generated content without being liable for its accuracy or fairness.
This instantly put both print and broadcast media outlets at a major disadvantage, one from which they have never recovered. What it actually meant in practice is that anyone could now call himself or herself a journalist and attract an audience for their claims, however bizarre and undocumented they might be.
Millions of people quickly took advantage of that opportunity and new websites popped up everywhere. Among them were a handful, like Wired, Salon and Slate in the early years, that attempted to preserve the quality standards of traditional journalism during the transition to this new interactive digital world, with varying degrees of success. (I was at both Salon and Wired during this period.)
But the traditional media and new media alike were quickly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of new information sources. Very rapidly, the existing world of media began to crumble into ruins.
A lot has happened between those days and now in the world of media, very little of it good. But I will leave that part of the story for another day…
[NOTE: This is an edited version of an essay I first published in 2022.]
HEADLINES:
Biden expected to unveil immigration order severely limiting asylum-seeker crossings (CNN)
Biden says he’s restricting asylum to help ‘gain control’ of the border (AP)
The reich stuff – what does Trump really have in common with Hitler? (Guardian)
'An everyday part of the world': Hunter Biden trial puts spotlight on addiction (NBC)
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, defended the president's son, Hunter Biden, from federal charges relating to a gun purchase in 2018. "I don’t see any good coming from that," Graham said. Opening arguments are set to begin this morning in the younger Biden's trial. [HuffPost]
US attorney general denies politicizing justice system against Trump (Reuters)
Former Trump aides charged in Wisconsin over 2020 elector plot (WP)
Modi’s Magic Is Fading Fast. Who’s Next for India? (Bloomberg)
Childbirth is deadlier in the U.S. than any other high-income nation. About 22 maternal deaths happened for every 100,000 live births in the U.S., a new study found. For Black people, it was 49.5 deaths. (WP)
Triple-digit temperatures to hit parts of California and Arizona in early-season heat wave (NBC)
Netanyahu’s Far-Right Partners Reject Cease-Fire Compromise (NYT)
Netanyahu strains to keep government together amid spreading rebellions (WP)
Georgia (the country) to move ahead soon with bill curbing LGBT rights (Reuters)
Accelerating AI: the cutting-edge chips powering the computing revolution (Nature)
China’s race to tech supremacy — Robot generation (Financial Times)
OpenAI employees are demanding change. Here are the 4 things they want. (Business Insider)
Can A.I. Rethink Art? Should It? (NYT)
Congress Takes Field Trip To Goldman Sachs To Learn How Laws Get Made (The Onion)
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