What Joe Rogan, Washington Post dramas say about the US election and media

This week’s coverage of the US presidential election highlights the news industry’s complete transformation.

One involves Joe Rogan, the world’s most popular podcaster.

The Washington Post, one of the most storied newspapers in American journalism, is the subject of the other.

Each of them emphasizes the declining influence of traditional media in its own way.

Rogan said on Monday that he had declined to speak with Vice President Kamala Harris despite the terms that her campaign had set aside for him in order to continue hosting her at his Texas studio before the election.

In a post on X, Rogan wrote, “They offered a date for Tuesday, but I would have had to travel to her and they only wanted to do an hour.”

“It’s in my opinion that the Austin studio is the best place to do it.” I want to meet her as a person and have a nice conversation.

Rogan’s announcement came as rumors arose about whether Harris would make an appearance following the podcaster’s three-hour-long rambling discussion with former president Donald Trump.

Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, is set to join Rogan for an interview on Wednesday.

Rogan, who first gained notoriety as a comedian and mixed martial arts commentator before turning to podcasting, is gaining a lot of candidates’ attention because of his unmatched media coverage.

Since Friday, his interview with Trump has received more than 41 million YouTube views, which is not including the presumably millions of viewers who have watched on other platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.

Comparatively, Harris’ town hall on CNN last week attracted 3.3 million viewers (a modified version of the event’s YouTube version has received fewer than 1.2 million views).

Rogan gives Harris a chance to connect with young men, a demographic she is struggling to appeal to, who has also gravitated toward non-traditional media with appearances on the Call Her Daddy and Club Shay Shay podcasts, among others.

In men aged 18 to 29, Trump leads Harris 58 percent to 37 percent, in the most recent polls conducted by The New York Times and Siena College Research Institute (in the opposite situation, Harris is leading Trump 67-28 percent among young women).

Following a similar move by The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post decided not to offer a presidential endorsement for the first time since 1988, which has become the other noteworthy media story in recent days.

Publisher and CEO Will Lewis characterized the decision as “a statement in support of our readers’ ability to make up their own minds” and as a return to The Post’s tradition of non-endorsing prior to the 1970s.

The decision to not support Harris has sparked a furious backlash both inside and outside the newspaper because Trump’s critics view US democracy as being at risk.

A wave of readers canceled their subscriptions in protest of the newspaper’s editorial board’s resignations (NPR, citing anonymous sources, reported that the masthead lost more than 250, 000 paid subscribers, or about 10% of the total).

Critics speculate that Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of The Post, is attempting to win Trump over in order to prevent him from regaining control of the White House.

Bezos and the Trump team disagreed on any issues in an opinion piece that was published on Monday, and he claimed the decision was solely motivated by a desire to combat declining media trust.

He claimed the action was a “meaningful step” in restoring trust because “nothing does the scales tip” when presidential endorsements are used to create bias.

“Most people believe the media is biased”, Bezos said, pointing to a recent Gallup poll that found only 31 percent of Americans have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the media to report the news fairly and accurately.

“Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion”.

Bezos argued that he could not allow the newspaper to “fade into irrelevance” and be overtaken without a fight by “unresearched podcasts and social media barbs.”

It is difficult to dispute Bezos’ claim that traditional media outlets are struggling to stay relevant, regardless of whether one assumes he acted in defiance of principle or his business interests.

Source: Aljazeera