
Speaking with Joe Rogan this week, Mark Zuckerberg described journalists and TV anchors as members of the “legacy media” as a “cultural elite class” that “needs to get repopulated.”
I find it ironic that this Harvard educated, incredibly influential and powerful autocrat, this billionaire monopolist robber baron, one of the richest people in the world, jetting from London to Dubai to Aspen to Davos to eat hors d'oeuvres with presidents, kings and oligarchs thinks that the evening news anchor on the local CBS affiliate in Los Angeles or the Los Angeles Times reporter putting their life on the line to cover this story while their entire neighborhood burns down is the one out of touch with real America. But set that aside for a second, and let’s consider what the role of the legacy media is and why Zuck thinks they should be cast out.
The "legacy media" is the favorite punching bag of every mentally underclocking wannabe pundit with a smartphone and a ring light and too much time on their hands. ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, the Post, the Times… these dinosaurs, stumbling around in their expensive suits and haircuts, clutching their Pulitzer Prizes while influencers on Rumble and TikTok laugh at them and their shrinking audiences. They figure, who needs the Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times when you can just scroll through your retired uncle's Facebook feed to get the real news?
Here’s the thing: if you’re rooting for the death of the "legacy media," you’re not sticking it to the man. You’re not sticking up for the truth, floating around out there in an ocean of lies. What you are doing is setting fire to the last lifeboat and cheering as it sinks. Because when the so-called “legacy media” outlets go away, what rises to take their place? It’s not a golden age of truth and citizen journalism. It’s ten thousand voices screaming at you all at once, where everyone has a megaphone, no one has a filter, and the loudest, dumbest voice wins.
Let’s talk about those Los Angeles reporters for a second. You know what they do, right? No, not just writing headlines that make you angry—though they’re pretty good at that. I’m talking about the unglamorous, backbreaking work of actual journalism. Reading court documents. Interviewing powerful people that do not want to be interviewed. Sitting through boring zoning board meetings. Traveling to war zones. Digging through public records to find the one nugget of truth buried under a mountain of lies. It’s not sexy. It doesn’t go viral. It doesn’t end with them getting a two million dollar check like Erin Brockovich. It doesn’t end with them sipping margaritas on a yacht with Sean Penn. It ends with some idiot with a Pepe the Frog avatar making death threats at them on Twitter because the reporter didn’t confirm their biases hard enough.
But sure, let’s burn it all down. Let’s destroy the institutions that bring you stories about corruption, environmental disasters, human rights abuses, and the local government decisions that directly affect your life. Because apparently, it’s more important to stick it to "legacy media" than to have any reliable source of information at all. Who needs context when you’ve got clickbait? Who needs expertise when you’ve got conspiracy theories? And who needs professional ethics when your favorite YouTuber is more than happy to tell you exactly the lies you want to hear from the front seat of his Ford F-150 for $5 a month on Patreon?
You think the media is biased? Congratulations, you’ve cracked the code. Yes, reporters are human beings with perspectives, and those perspectives sometimes color their work. But you know what else they are? Professionals. Trained professionals who actually care about getting things right and get in trouble when they don’t. They make mistakes, sure. Big ones, sometimes. But they also issue corrections, publish retractions, and lose sleep over the possibility of getting it wrong. Compare that to your average TikTok commentator, who’s probably too busy chasing likes to bother with silly little things like facts.
You know what the alternative to the legacy media is? It’s Thunderdome. It’s the Wild West. Nothing but echo chambers, disinformation, and snake oil salesmen peddling whatever nonsense will get them clicks.
The minute the lights go out in the legacy media, all that will be left is largely anonymous outlets with names like "American Real Freedom News Freedom Watch 24/7," where every story is brought to you by Russia and China, or by patriot buckets full of beans and canned peaches and nutritional supplements that “doctors don’t want you to know about!” Or, better yet, you'll get your news directly from the people in power, who are gonna be thrilled—absolutely thrilled— that they have no one left to actually hold them accountable for what they say and what they do.
You think you’ll be fine without legacy media? You think your favorite writer on X is going to keep you informed? Good luck when that writer has no newsroom, no legal team, and no editorial oversight to back them up. Good luck when they’re silenced by a billionaire because they wrote something inconvenient. Or when they burn out, because reporting the truth isn’t just a side hustle you can do between podcast episodes. It’s a full-time job—a grueling, thankless, poorly paid job that most people wouldn’t last a week doing, least of all the basement-dwelling meme merchants who couldn’t even write a grocery list, let alone a 10,000 word expose on why everyone in your town has colon cancer. Joe Rogan is not going to do that work. Tim Pool is not going to do that work. Theo Von is not going to do that work.
And let me now speak directly to those who are cheering for the collapse of the free press as we’ve known it for the last 100 years - let’s be real: you’re not going to show up to city council meetings with a notebook and start covering the news yourself. You’re not going to learn how to file FOIA requests or spend hours sifting through campaign finance data. You’re going to scroll. You’re going to click on whatever headline makes you the angriest, whether it’s true or not. And you’re going to be manipulated—by politicians, by corporations, by whoever has the resources to fill the vacuum left by the institutions you couldn’t wait to see fail.
So, yeah, go ahead. Cheer for the death of legacy media. Call it corrupt, call it biased, call it fake news if that makes you feel a few inches taller. But don’t come crying to me when all you have left is propaganda, PR spin and pink slime. When the only news it’s even possible to get is the news that billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and his friends want you to get while they pick your pocket and loot the place - don’t say I didn’t warn you.
The legacy media is messy. It’s flawed. It’s sometimes infuriating. But you’re going to miss it when it’s gone. Because when the watchdog is dead, the wolves aren’t going to leave you alone. They’re going to eat you alive. And the saddest part? You’ll have helped them do it.