Published Sunday 2nd February 2024

We are witnessing in real-time the birth of the new access media, and this time it is driven by who controls the social media algorithms.

Topics:

• I was away on travel, hence missing a few episodes.
• In the recent inauguration of President Trump in the US, I was struck by a photograph of tech platform owners like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg enjoying front-row seats.
• I cannot get this photograph out of my mind, and let me explain why I believe it was so significant.
• It seemed to me that they were being rewarded for helping President Trump to help secure his second term via the new media, especially Elon Musk.
• Donald Trump is very shrewd when is comes to the media business, and understands that as the legacy media is dying he needs the new media run by the tech platform owners to influence public opinion.
• The journalists at CNN and the New York Times no longer need to be wined and dined, instead he realizes those journalists have been replaced by social media algorithms that are recommending political content into the feeds of hundreds of millions of Americans.
• In return for helping President Trump to influence public opinion, the tech platform owners gain influence on regulations that help the business grow further, especially via tax breaks and deregulation.
• This is the new access media, or access journalism, and it is no improvement on the previous model based on newspaper and TV channel ownership.
• Wikipedia defines access journalism as the following: "Access journalism, or access reporting, refers to journalism (often in interview form) which prioritizes access - meaning media time with important, rich, famous, powerful, or otherwise influential people in politics, culture, sports, and other areas - over journalistic objectivity and/or integrity.". Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_journalism
• Sound familiar?
• At the first sign of any resistance, it will be interesting to watch President Trump withdraw access to the new media owners and influencers: it already happened to Vivek Ramaswamy, others will follow.
• What I have been working on this week:
• Greppr is now at 15 million web pages indexed.
• Media I am enjoying this week:
• "The Thing Itself" by Adam Roberts.

Download audio

techleaderpro-2025-week-5.mp3

File details: 6.9 MB MP3, 4 mins 48 secs duration.

Title music is "Apparent Solution" by Brendon Moeller, licensed via www.epidemicsound.com

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