Episode 40: Social Media vs. Legacy Media in Today’s World

Good morning everybody. Welcome to the Overruled podcast. This is David Vicknair along with my co-host Brad Scott.

Good morning.

Good morning. It’s nice to be with you here again. We have a great, discussion topic. Once again, this is the Overruled podcast brought to you by the Scott Vicknair Law firm. And Brad, as I understand it, we were talking before, had a very interesting and lively discussion. You want to talk about the bane of probably everybody’s existence. We’re gonna hit a bunch of nerves. Everyone wants to talk about, you know, the news. Yes. The news. And we’ve touched on this topic before in a prior episode about a year ago about how people are turning to social media now for their news, as opposed to legacy media. Well, we’ve kind of seen this blow up in the last political cycle. I don’t want to get into the politics of it, but, that was the big talk. This death of legacy news media and this rise of what they’re calling news influencers.

Just so happens, Pew Research just released a report in the last couple of days from when we’re filming this. It’s called America’s News Influencers and they came out with some stats and they’re trying to put in some context and some numbers on what’s kind of going on here. And, you know, it begs some questions as far as what’s gonna go, what’s gonna happen in the future with this kind of stuff. But just some kind of interesting stats that came out of this as far as these news influencers and legacy media. One in five Americans say that they get their news primarily from social media influencers, not traditional news outlets, like our CNNs and our Foxses and things of that. Among adults, so that’s 20%. Among adults under 30, this is our Gen Z, generation that we, we know you, we love to talk about. You love them. But among adults under 30, this figure skyrocks to 37% that are not tuning into TV, they’re tuning into their phones and the little talking heads there.

So younger generations are definitely kind of redefining how information spreads in society. Another couple takeaways from it. These people that are on these, these news influencers, they’re not your traditional journalists. 77% of them have no formal news media training. Most of them, 59% are monetizing their content. So, you know, they’re getting paid to talk, about what they’re putting out there. Another thing, 65% of Americans who follow news influencers say that these creators helped them understand current events better than traditional outlets. So it kind of begs a few questions that I kind of wrote down here. You know, three big issues or key points. We definitely see this, this shifting. You know, how this shift from established institutions to individual influencers is reflecting a growing distrust for our traditional news media. And then the other two things, it kind of touched on is, we have a democratization of information. You know, it’s being spread out amongst a lot more people. Is this a good or a bad thing? You know, are we creating these echo chambers online where people are putting their opinions there and all they’re hearing back is the same thing? These echo chambers.

And the last thing is this kind of monetization, or the ethics of this situation. You know, are these news influencers, are they beholden to the person who’s following them, or are they beholden to their own bank account and really putting out things that are really just monetizing for themselves and, you know, their own financial good. Which if that’s their motivation, you know, it starts questioning how good this coverage is going to be and people relying on these things. So I thought it was kind of an interesting issue to bring up now, having seen how it kind of played out in this last election, which I know Fox News coverage was saying that, you know, legacy media is dead. All the stuff they were covering about Trump, you know, didn’t come to fruition. And Fox News said. Fox News. Okay. But, you know, another question is, has the traditional media outlets brought this on themselves?

What was the first one? We gotta go one by one because you lost me. You went so fast. What was the first one? Because I wanted to jump in, but I wanted to let you go. Changing trust paradigm. You know, we’re shifting from more institutional type of legacy media to these news influencers as they’re called. Is this a real shift in trust? So where’s this going? Is this permanent? Is this a, you know, we talk about the pendulum, it always swings from one end to the other end. You know, has legacy media done this to themselves? 100%. Because people just don’t want to hear it anymore. 100%. I hate putting on TV anymore. So I think personally, this shift’s been happening for a while. That people don’t trust legacy. Okay. CBS, ABC, Fox, MSNBC, CNN. I think it’s been a shift for a long time that people don’t trust those outlets. And they have done it to themselves because it’s all tied into monetization, right?

Like they don’t care. Shocking on me. They don’t care about the truth or trying to get to the truth, because sometimes the truth’s complicated, right? A lot of it involves opinion and a lot of it involves competing facts. And so the world is gray. But monetization takes out the gray and they put it in black and white in favor of eyeballs. And so I think the majority of the country or most people are smarter enough to know that CNN, yeah, I hope. I’m being an optimist, Brad. Come on. It’s an optimistic day. I’m all hyped up on coffee right now. So, I think a lot of people have for a long time now, at least in my adult life, the last 15, 20 years, have shifted away from the days of Walter Cronkite or these traditional, true news reporters who they trusted. I always thought of it as, when Tim Russert died, the famous Meet the Press host, who was a true down the middle, hit everybody newsman. Like I almost felt like in some ways, the young adult, that was the death of true down the line news coverage.

But I think that’s been happening for a while. And I also think, like I said, I think people have common sense. Like they know, like the same reason I don’t watch any of these stations. I know they’re just trying to get me riled up about a particular issue, and the issue is not what they presented as. And it’s all about eyeballs and monetization. And so they’ve done it to themselves. In my humble opinion. And I’ve talked about this before. I get on this soapbox all the time is, there’s a difference between reporting news and providing commentary. And the problem is today’s news outlets, the legacy media, as we’re calling it, they don’t report news anymore. It’s all commentary. I remember when I was a kid, and I’m probably dating myself, there was a guy on the local channel four, Bill Elder. And you know, when he’d come on the news, it was always at the end of the newscast. There was a huge warning before he came on, you know, the following things are going to be the opinions of Bill Elder. They’re not the opinion of the station. And he’d give his opinion, his commentary. And then when he was finished, there was an exiting, warning as well, that these views do not necessarily reflect the station.

So there was always when I was growing up, a separation between news, reporting facts, and then commentary, people putting spin on facts. And you know, I don’t like to watch the news all that much. But when I get, when I do watch it, it seems like everything now is all commentary. And you can see the same news story and watch it on CNN and then flip the station to Fox News, and you’d swear they’re completely two different news events that occurred, based on just the commentary and the spin they’re giving there. But don’t you think, let me ask this, because I should have stopped myself before. Don’t you see a distinction between local news, like the local WWL and local Fox 8 or local, NBC stations, and national? Absolutely. Because I personally. It’s completely different thing. Yeah. I think the, I think the same people, I would actually what I think would be interesting, is if someone did a consumer study and looked at the group of people who don’t trust or watch the national news because of these reasons, and compare that subset to whether or not they review and trust the local news stations.

And my hypothesis and bet would be that a bunch of that group who doesn’t trust or watch the national news, does watch local news because they know they’re actually getting reporting as opposed to commentary.

Reporter. They’re reporting. Yes. And that’s a very good distinction you bring up because it’s completely two different things. The news on a national scale and how it’s handled locally, different animals and these completely. So, but you know, we talk about monetization. You know, obviously the national news, media outlets, they have to sell commercials. And hence the kind of the commentary they put on it. But at the same time, these influencers, these news influencers. You know, they’re making money. This is a business for them. And all of a sudden, people may have this blind trust and deference to these people, not knowing, kind of where they lie as far as their financial incentive for doing things. So, is this really a good or bad thing? You know, there is no checks and balances with these people. They’re spread out, you know, so many of them. And if you notice in this last political cycle, these news influencers were actually interviewing the candidates. You know, both candidates, both Harris and Trump did interviews. Now, when you say, when you say news influencers, you mean like podcast hosts or podcast hosts, these people on TikTok, these YouTubers, these people are not within traditional norms as what we call journalists with a news agency.

They’re individuals who have their own media channels through social media and things like that. And they’re reporting, they’re giving commentary, and I mean, they’re having a seat at the table now. Like I said, this last election, they’ve actually sat down and interviewed some of these candidates. They had, they hosted fundraisers for them. So, I mean, they’re part of what we deal with as far as the news. For good or bad, they’re an element. Questions are, are they here to stay? Is it something we can trust? How do we deal with this? So, I think about this as a gray issue too. So the correlary I’m on that popped up just now is, when we get, and I get into a discussion with somebody about like, should we have elected judges or appointed judges? Yes. Okay. Elected judges, there’s flaws in that system, right? Like there’s problems. Like a judge being accountable to an electorate is absurd to me. Right? Because an electorate at a jurisprudential level, as a lawyer, a judge would understand, can’t really understand what a judge is doing when they render a decision.

At the same time, so that’s a flaw there, right? That they shouldn’t have to campaign and, yeah, right? But at the same time, we know appointed judges, you can get a really bad judge because it’s subject to the political process and favors. And so, like there’s no perfect system. Yes. And so I think the issue you raise an interesting one is, is the democratization of information, being decentralized from institutions, like television stations, and national news outlets, which are largely conglomerants of national corporations, right? Publicly traded companies. Is the democratization of their influence over Americans to other outlets such as podcast hosts, TikTok influencers, Instagram influencers, etcetera, etcetera. Yeah, I can see the problems there because the more democratization you have of information, the more subject it is to misinformation. However, like I generally lean towards what Elon Musk’s approach has been with X, which is like, I’d rather pick my poison and having more information and more speech as opposed to like individual people who are the ones deciding what should be the speech and what misinformation actually is.

And yeah, and either scenario, you have the risk of people getting the wrong facts. But I, I defer to more information, rather than less and institutionalized information, because guess what? No different than like a appointed judge’s, institutional information is subject to corruption and political influence and control. And that’s the thing is, you never know what someone, what their bias is, or what their agenda is, as far as these particular individuals. But you know, it becomes an interesting issue. If you democratize it, which can’t get the word out of my mouth today. And there’s more of it from more channels, people are going to levitate towards the ones that they most identify with or the ones they trust the most. So you almost have almost like a free hand, you know, free, the free hand of enterprise kind of at work. You know, the dollars are gonna follow where people go. And so you kind of voting with your eyeballs at that point and how that’s going to work.

So, but you know, I believe, you know, moving into the future, I think this is here to stay. If nothing more, it’s going to grow. If you look at people in this Gen Z generation, especially like my daughters and my kids, many of them do not consume like traditional TV as we would call it. You know, watching channel four, channel eight, you know, I’m from a generation where we had to actually flip the, the button on the thing. But now it’s all streaming. So these channels, even the local affiliates, unless they’re watched, you know, they’re not on Netflix, they’re not on Hulu, they’re not on these things. A lot of these younger generations just do not connect to those types of services. They’re not seeing that. So they’re naturally going to take in and watch more news on social media and things of that nature. So the question really, I mean, what is the legacy news going to do? They’re not going to roll over and die. They’re gonna have to adapt. And how, how are they going to do that to get those eyeballs back? Well, this is a great example of the market dictating what they have to do, which I love.

Because if you take streaming, for example, which is a great point you just made. And it was something I forgot to say just now, but I think critical. Is like a lot of traditional broadcast is moving to, it’s not going to happen overnight, but more and more people are consuming things on streaming. I’ve looked at the statistics over the last year and a half. Shout out Patrick Bell, you’re going to be very excited to hear this. But yes, that is the direction that the way people consume news in a TV format is moving. And so for me, I’m excited about that, when you have disruptors like YouTube TV coming in, because all these traditional cable companies, they suck. It’s like a great example of we’ve all experienced this as a consumer. They’re like monopolies. Terrible service, bad product, but the government through whatever FCC or Kane regulation exists has given us a monopoly. Propped up a monopoly and the consumer has gotten a worse product because of it.

And so I love streaming, taking a piece of broadcast and growing it and people like YouTube TV, because it forces the consumer to get a better product at a better price. Unless it’s the Tyson fight. That’s right. I didn’t pay for that. It was free on Netflix. I was actually flying back from, Dallas at the time. I’m trying to stream it on my phone, and I want to see what’s going to happen. Very disappointed, by the way, you want to give the ending away in case somebody didn’t watch it, but, you know, Mike Tyson. Yeah. Yeah. Come on. What did we think was going to happen? Did you watch the fight? No, but it’s like to get off on a tangent, but that was a setup. I mean, that was. I shouldn’t talk about it. I do not believe for a second that was a legitimate fight. And somebody was even saying the way the contract, we’re getting way off topic now. The contract actually incentivized Tyson not to knock him out. Like he was a graduated scale, he got paid more the more rounds he went. So by not knocking out Paul and getting to the eighth round, he made more money.

Interesting. And there’s lots of highlight videos going around on the internet right now. I feel like you can surprise it. Now, I mean, if you’re listening to this and you still haven’t seen the fight, you were never going to go watch it anyway. You’re under a rock. You’re not going to watch anyway. But you can see many instances where he’s, he’s pulling his punches. Just saying. But going back to the streaming thing. Netflix messed the bed with that thing. They were not ready for it. I mean, most people who tried to consume it, it was it was buffering, they couldn’t see the thing, you know, that’s a tech issue. But let’s get us back on topic though, you know, streaming is here, streaming’s not going away. It’s replacing a lot of the mainstream TV ads. We know it. This younger generation is, they’ve grew up in this streaming environment. They’re not turning on the TVs to watch cable news anymore. So this is definitely something that we’re at the beginning of or well into, that this is a major shift in society.

And a major shift in how news is going to be delivered. And then you kind of combine that with all the issues as far as this AI technology, these deep fakes and stuff like that. Well, you can’t really trust anything out there. But let me just jump in because it’s not just, like I agree 100%, but it’s not just streaming. I mean, look what we’re doing right now. People are consuming information and news on podcasts. People are consuming and receiving information on Instagram live, on TikTok channels. Like, I think that’s good. Like, is there going to be a lot of stuff in there that’s crazy and not true and misinformation? Yes. Absolutely. But people have more ability in America these days to get inf- access to information than ever before in the history of the country. And so, or some people going to be misinformed? Sure. But they’re always going to be misinformed. They’re going to be misinformed whether they’re watching somebody on an ABC news channel or if they’re listening to somebody on TikTok who’s saying something crazy, which is nothing to do with reality.

I mean, in my mind, it seems though, I mean, look, even though they’re polarizing and they have a bias. But it seems like the news media, the traditional legacy news media, as we’re referring to them today, has a little bit more at stake if they kind of report things and they fabricate facts or they kind of go off the deep end. You know, as opposed to an individual influencer, you know, they don’t have a corporation behind them, they’re not going to lose their job kind of thing. So, it, in my mind, I would be a lot more skeptical of something I’m seeing from a news influencer than something I would see on TV. Even though, you know, look, I have to kind of sift through the bull crap. And as far as their spin and stuff like that, but I feel like there’s a little bit more vetting of stories. Not by everybody, but sometimes they go off on a wild tangent, but it seems like there’s a little bit more control when it gets on TV on your popular, legacy news media.

That’s just supposed to somebody just turning on his camera, shooting a video from his bathroom or wherever he’s shooting from. And, you know, expounding about whatever the topic of the day is. I view it all at the end of the day as being skeptical because we’re the product. Yes. Like it’s the same reason they’re listening to us through our phones. We’re going on a dark conspiracy. We know they’re listening to us through our phones. I mean, like if you’re with like everybody has a story about this, but yes, they’re listening to us through our phones to sell us a product. The social media sites, we are the product. They’re selling us. And so the new, we are the product for the news. The news, whether it’s an influencer or a podcast person, I mean, we don’t, we don’t monetize this. So we’re unique. You can trust us. Yeah. We’re lawyers. You can’t trust us. We are trustworthy. But anyways, you know, whatever it is, they’re selling commercial spots. We don’t sell commercial spots in this podcast. We’re not getting paid by anybody to do this. This is to promote the firm. It’s different for a lot of people who are monetizing those platforms.

And so yes, you are the product. Just. It’s a very simple rule. If you’re not paying for the content, you are the content. You are the product. So be skeptical of the information you get, learn, read as much as possible from as many different places as you can. And think critically about it. It’s just my two cents on. I think I’m there with you. It’s kind of a good summary. You got to be skeptical. You got to have a little bit of a healthy disbelief for anything anybody tells you. My generation is all about not believing anybody. So it just, I hope that carries on and people don’t just blindly listen to this stuff. Because, you know, one of the things I see all the time, I’ll get people that will forward videos to me and things like that. And it’s like, this thing went viral. You know, millions of people have seen it. And it’s bull crap. You know, it’s not factually based on anything. So that, that ability for people to redistribute things that are misinfor information. And then that’s a whole another debate whether you can kind of police misinformation or not. You know, because then who’s the person who’s going to police it?

Well, that’s, so it creates a huge problem for us. Let me give you a great example of why I’m a huge believer in the democratization of information and what we have today with technology. Do you think in any way possible over the last 50 years, the government could have hid UFOs like they’ve hid, if we had the technology and platforms and phones and everybody’s saying that UFOs are real or not? Okay. So we all know what’s going on in Congress right now. If you haven’t been paying attention, you’ve been under a rock. There is literally congressional hearings happening in DC right now. Which we talked about before. Which they are now admitting under, like we all know that they have biologic bodies of other species that they’ve recovered and had from us. They have the video. I was watching the day that they had in these committee hearings. It’s insane that they’ve had all this stuff of these, these aircraft that have been like buzzing around planes and stuff. This totally non-human life forms. They’ve admitted that they’ve been hiding it from us. Like when all of it comes out, you know, as it slowly started, like it’s been coming out in bits and drafts over the last two years. Hoping we forget about it. Yes. It’s been hidden from us for 50 or 60 years intentionally. And so my point is that the government or any institution could never hide information like that of that large of a scale, which is so important for the public to be aware of.

If they had all these different apps and these phones and these photo cameras everywhere. And in these types of nowadays. It’s much easier for information to be disseminated. It’s much easier for people to collect information. I mean, everybody walks around with basically a video studio in their pocket now with their iPhone. Correct. So, yeah, like I’ve said before, I can’t imagine that technology when I was a teenager. The stuff I may have gotten away with that I would have gotten away with. Correct. So, but we’re definitely heading into new territory with all this. Do you think there are UFOs? Of course, there’s UFOs. And they’re definitely non-human people. Or things, right? Some of them are calls of the firm. I think they are. If you think if you think it might be you, it might be you. Yes. Because I’ve had some very strange conversations on the phone. So, that could be said for the whole phone. They’re among us. I’m going to say how much time we got left. So, let’s wrap this up. You know, good or bad, what’s your final vote on this, this push into news influencers and away from legacy media? Good. Good. I think I’m with you. You know, I’m resistant to change. I’m going older in my days. It’s just, I hope it’s done responsibly. Well, I don’t think there’s any way to ensure that it will be.

And there will always be crazy people on whatever platform it is, saying things which are not any part of a fabric of truth. But I think nobody has a monopoly on the truth. Correct. And a lot of issues, whether we don’t talk about political issues here, whether it’s a public issue, whether it’s a public health issue, a safety issue, whatever it is, political. Like, they’re not always simple. And so, like, I just get frustrated when it’s like this or that. And it’s never this or that. There’s always more complicating facts and issues which delve into solutions and issues going on. My parting thoughts are to encourage people. And as lawyers, we do this all the time, we have to separate facts from opinions and, you know, what we know, what we think we know, what we can prove kind of things. You know, in court, facts are what matter. Now, we just urge people when you’re consuming this type of media, kind of sift through what’s the facts they’re telling me? What’s the actual things that are provable, as opposed to what are they telling me to believe? And what are they, what’s their opinion? There’s a big difference in those two things. Listen, be a skeptic. Couldn’t agree more. Great discussion, Brad. Thank you so much for doing that research and getting me on a tangent for half the show. We talked about Mike Tyson, aliens, and the news. So, didn’t see half. Didn’t see two of the three coming. We talked about one of them that we’re going to talk about today. So, great discussion. And as always, thank you to all of our great, guests, and listeners who have, followed us along this journey. I hope you enjoyed the discussion today. We have a lot more interesting guests coming your way. We have a lot of. So maybe some of those aliens. Aliens. Yeah, I think we got one coming from Roswell. Miles said he’s shipping that, piece of biologic in. It should be here any day now. Stay tuned. You’d be surprised what you can get sent through FedEx. A little overnight shipping. But, we have a lot of new local guests coming. We’ve had some of those come out. Really looking forward to a lot of our guest lineup coming up over the next two or three months. Thank you all for listening and following along. Once again, this has been the Overruled podcast, brought to you by the Scott Vicknair Law firm. This is David Vicknair along with my co-host Brad Scott. Sign out. Take care. Take care, everybody.

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