Stephen’s view
Winston Churchill once said that democracy was "the worst form of government, except for all the others". I think the same is true about the often-insulted 'mainstream media'.
After Andy Burnham became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, some listeners of the podcast and readers of this newsletter congratulated me for 'predicting the future', as I had suggested a few weeks before that it looked likely that he would be.
However, I don't think that I did anything impressive by writing in this newsletter that Burnham was likely to become Prime Minister. I simply followed the British mainstream media, in which journalists who know a lot more about internal British politics than I do were writing that this was very likely to happen.
The same was true in 2022, when I was speaking to people who were convinced that because of Russia's size and military might, the war in Ukraine would be over quickly, with a Russian victory. Reading the work of journalists who knew Ukraine and Russia well convinced me that the war would go on for a long time, and Russia would not win in any conventional sense (you can hear evidence of that in the Ask Me Anything episodes of 2022 and 2023).
At the start of the COVID pandemic I struggled to convince people that don't consume mainstream media that the pandemic was going to have a massive impact on our world.
The term "mainstream media" is almost always used in a negative way - as an insult that suggests that the media is biased, corrupt, and full of propaganda. In some places, like China, Russia, Iran and Eritrea, all media is some combination of biased, corrupt and full of propaganda.
However, in most western democratic countries, I think it is relatively decent. Of course, some news sources are better than others. Some get things wrong by accident, and some are almost openly biased (like Fox News in the US). Some have an editorial line* that prioritises certain stories over others.
But overall, the mainstream media in places like the UK give a pretty clear view of what has happened, what is happening and what is likely to happen. It is not always right, but it is better than any alternative I have ever found.
Criticising mainstream media is easy to do. But what better way do we have of informing ourselves?
That is not a rhetorical question*, so if you have an answer, please reply!
Have a great weekend.
Stephen
P.S. * The editorial line is the general point of view of a publication, for example, being more conservative or liberal, or focussing on human rights issues or economics.
P.P.S * A rhetorical question is a question you don't expect an answer to; said to make a point rather than genuinely asking a question.
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