"Opinion Overload: Talking Heads Are Not the News"
Dr. Adam North discusses how original reporting is being overshadowed by easily produced opinion pieces.
Homogenising the News
We now seemingly live in a decentralised media landscape. By this, I mean that the distribution of news appears to have shifted away from powerful legacy print organisations. Or at least it seems that way. In fact, what I want to argue here is that most news media is still created by a small (and shrinking) number of legacy news organisations. Although it may appear like the news can be acquired from a range of resources across YouTube, X, Podcasts, Substack, etc., much of the news is simply paraphrasing or reiterating articles from the legacy media. In fact, it seems to me that most news production is from a small number of legacy media outlets including the Associated Press, Reuters, The Guardian, the BBC, CNN, and The New York Times. There are others that I have not included here, but these seem to be the most popular and commonly shared sources for news. Other news websites are not producing high levels of independent journalism, but are providing commentary on, or reiteration of, the original news produced by the aforementioned legacy media outlets.
Take any of the ‘independent’ journalists on the numerous social media platforms and ask yourself, do they produce any independent journalism? There is a case to be made that interviews are original contributions to news media, but many of the people being invited to interview compound the problem — that there is now an ecosystem of talking heads that reiterate the news without producing any new news. It would not be fair to tar all ‘independent’ content creators with the same brush because there will be some who are contributing to independent news creation, but this is not a large number, and not among the most popular alternative news providers. Furthermore, there may be some benefit to having these talking heads analysing the most popular news of the day, but it leads to a concentration of attention of a few high-profile news stories. My argument is that this leads to a compounding problem where local issues are increasingly marginalised, and the news becomes homogenised.
This is not a left or right issue because it is shared by the biggest alternative news providers on both sides of the political divide. From Novarro Media on the left, through to James O’Brien on the centre left, The Rest is Politics (or the Rest is White People as Gary Younge wittily described it) and the Gary Lineker Universe in the centre, Tucker Carlson on the right, and Joe Rogan, Russell Brand, and many more who exist in the conspiracy space for which there is no reliable journalism. All these outlets have largely the same production pipeline — find a news story from traditional media and then discuss it. It is very rare for these influencers to offer any new news, although it is more common in the right-wing/ conspiracy theory space for which there is less fact checking and so stories are more likely to be invented or disseminated that are not based on evidence. Perhaps this is not the end of the world because people are able to consume the news in a nicely digestible manner where they previously wouldn’t have. However, I believe it is of more harm than good.
How Privilege and Rhetoric Mask Real Engagement.
I single out Rory Stewart from The Rest is Politics as a case study not because he is any more responsible for it than any other alternative news provider, only because I have listened to more of his content. I do not want to suggest Stewart is not intelligent because I am sure that he is a clever man. However, I do take issue with the number of issues that he seems to both claim expertise on, and the way in which he asserts his opinion as if it is the truth. Stewart claims to read countless books which I have heard people evidence to support the claim that he must know what he is talking about. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt — he likely reads a lot. But anyone in academia knows there’s a difference between reading widely and reading critically. For someone as busy as he is, I simply do not believe that if he is reading as much as he claims, that he is reading with a critical eye that could provide him with the authority to speak like an expert. This is likely a result of the education and background he has had, at Eton and then Oxford, where the skill of rhetoric is key, but I find it incredibly frustrating considering the size of the platform he has. Stewart’s background is a great example of a blindspot because he is clearly enraged whenever he is accused of having certain ideological biases based on his privilege. Stewart’s lack of self-reflection on his positionality is absurd considering that he was a tutor for Prince William and Harry and deeply defensive of the Royal family. I find that privilege and rhetoric are common factors among the talking heads that serve as a source of fake authority.
Conclusion
Ultimately, it is in the talking-heads interest to use rhetoric to make the audience think that they are being provided with a critical analysis of the news, and not just a regurgitation that offers very little, but sadly this is often the case. Until we demand more original reporting — and value it above slickly packaged commentary — we’ll be stuck in a loop of opinion masquerading as journalism. And in that loop, real news quietly disappears. If opinion is easier to produce, and more profitable to package, then original journalism will keep slipping through the cracks.
