Most of these have disappeared or been gutted by the internet. In that era, the United States had a far more vibrant local information scene, with strong competition among daily newspapers in even medium-sized cities. Most Americans got their news from the three national television networks-CBS, NBC, and ABC-which mostly took their leads straight from the big papers, allowing their coverage decisions to be especially guided by the Times’s front page. When I was starting out as a journalist in the early 1980s, the news in my country, the United States, was utterly dominated by a small number of companies, starting with the so-called national newspapers such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. With all of its shortcomings, Twitter has been a powerful agent in the democratization of information over the past generation.ĭepending on one’s age, it may be all too easy to ignore or forget what the human information ecosystem was like a mere generation ago. Marketing professor and podcast host Scott Galloway, speaking on CBS News’s Face the Nation on Sunday, said the platform is “not a national treasure.” But there are many reasons to mourn the ongoing spectacle. commentators have dismissed what is going on at Twitter.

And at virtually the same moment, Canadian psychologist and media personality Jordan Peterson, a long-standing provocateur in the United States’ culture wars and notable opponent of the protection of rights of transgender and nonbinary people, was welcomed back to Twitter.Īnticipating widespread criticism, Musk, who often comes across as a gleeful adolescent and exhibitionist, tweeted, “Hope all judgy hall monitors stay on other platforms – please, I’m begging u.” Another day, the public learns that Marjorie Taylor Green, one of the most radical exponents in Congress of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement, has been granted renewed access to Twitter. Unsurprisingly, given Musk’s politics, he was. President Donald Trump should be allowed to return to the platform. One day, the headlines are dominated by Musk polling his Twitter followers to determine whether former U.S. In the United States, the daily news accounts of Twitter’s decline and possible demise can give the impression that Elon Musk’s disastrous early days as the owner of the social media company is a largely American story.

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