The 2024 U.S. Elections and the strange new information environment
by John MacBeath Watkins News media have certain characteristics. They have paid news gatherers and paid editors who are in charge, respectively, of of gathering and curating the news presented in the newspaper, internet site, or television or radio broadcast. Editors and journalists are relatively easy to hold accountable for their accuracy and fairness. In the wake of the 2024 U.S. Election, it soon became evident that most of the people who relied on sites that are held accountable for their accuracy and fairness tended to vote for Harris, while those who relied on social media, Youtube, or search engines tended to vote for Trump. Young people tended to rely more on social media, search engines, or Youtube for their news than older people. * Fox News is a bit of an outlier here. It employs editors and journalists, but it isn't really selling news, it's selling its bias to an audience that prefers a right-leaning bias. Its adherence to scrupulous truth-telling was clear...
