Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Stay Tuned In Brief. I’m Preet Bharara.

Being online has gotten worse. It seems like any given day’s newsfeed is a whirlwind of tragedy, envy, conspiracy theories, misinformation, and now utter chaos, and buried in it all is the valuable information about what is really happening. Joining me to discuss is The Atlantic staff writer Charlie Warzel. He writes the popular newsletter, Galaxy Brain, about technology, media, and big ideas.

Charlie, welcome to the show.

Charlie Warzel:

Thank you for having me.

Preet Bharara:

So there’s lots to talk about, obviously, in the world: policy, politics, the media, and you write a lot about that. I guess my first question is: What is the legacy media? How do you define it? Who’s included in it, and is it or is it not an insult these days?

Charlie Warzel:

Oh, man, there’s a lot there. I think the way that I would define it, I mean, there’s the way that I think a lot of people use it as shorthand for the big remaining papers or the things that they remember reading in their youth.

Preet Bharara:

Is The Atlantic? Is The Atlantic legacy?

Charlie Warzel:

Oh, The Atlantic, definitely, definitely, I think, legacy media. I believe 1865 is when it’s founded; you don’t get more legacy than that. But I think a lot of people define it as the media that’s sort of been around for a long time that’s popular. But I would say major newspapers, major magazines, major news stations, and cable channels and things like that.

But I think I would say a better way to think about that is as media entities that have to really follow a set of standards, a traditional set of standards, in terms of not only how they report, but how they publish. And I would say that legacy media and the phrase institutions, or sorry, the term institutions, are very tightly wound up in each other. A legacy media organization is one that has institutional authority but also institutional bureaucracy and institutional structures. At The Atlantic, I have fact-checkers. We have copy editors. We have a editorial apparatus that works not only to make sure that we’re publishing the most truthful, best-written factual content, but there’s also just a lot of checks on every individual person in that process to make sure that nobody does anything reckless in that.

And I think that that sort of bureaucracy, which takes time to navigate, which is slower than say, somebody firing up Twitch and just talking, or even a lot of podcasts, where two people can just get together and speak extemporaneously on issues or TikTok or social media or whatever, or publishing to a Substack. Legacy media exists in opposition to that, to the newer style of media.

And as to whether it’s an insult or not, I think to a lot of people, it is, and I think it’s because of that being bound up in institutions. This is a moment of deep distrust of institutions, and so I think that there’s that element there.

Preet Bharara:

So on this issue of whether or not it’s an insult and who owns the term and whether it’s pejorative or neutral or something else, when you, from The Atlantic or someone from The New York Times hears themselves being called legacy media, do they feel insulted or not?

Charlie Warzel:

I mean, I think it depends, right? I used to. Previously, I worked at The New York Times, so I’ve been in different newsrooms that you would classify as legacy media. I mean, I think to some degree, a lot of people who are in those institutions are there because they’re proud of it. They’re there because they understand the rigor. They understand the mission statement. They connect to the history. I think that’s a really important thing. Something that I feel, whether I was at The Times or whether I’m at The Atlantic, is this connection to a history of people who have done this work before and really helped document major moments of American struggle.

But also, just The Atlantic is an archive of the American idea in this way, and it’s great to be a part of that but not to be a company home or anything.

Preet Bharara:

Can be.

Charlie Warzel:

I would say there’s also a frustration, too, inside of this anti-institutional push. And I know my peers across the media industry, who are in these places, we do feel frustration, because sometimes these checks that are put into the system, this institutional editorial bureaucracy, makes it harder to compete with this type of news cycle.

I’ve been doing a lot of reporting on Elon Musk and the DOGE incursion into the federal government, and something that I feel, doing that work and painstakingly reporting and checking sources and verifying and going through this procedure, while Elon Musk kicks down doors and is sending 21-year-olds into the Treasury to look at sensitive information. I feel sometimes like I’m bringing a spoon to a gunfight. Everything’s moving so fast.

So I do think there’s frustration and a wish to want to be able to compete in that way, but at the same time, that editorial apparatus serves something very important.

Preet Bharara:

What’s interesting about your description of and defense of the legacy media and the fact-checking and the standards and all those other things that you just talked about. When I hear people denigrate legacy media, whether it’s Elon Musk or someone else, it seems that the thrust of their denigration is legacy media is biased. Legacy media misses facts. Legacy media covers the wrong things. Legacy media gets it wrong.

When ABC settles a significant lawsuit or when CBS is on the verge of settling a significant lawsuit, it undermines, in the minds of many, this whole regime that you’re talking about, which is supposed to make, on that view, legacy media more trustworthy, more correct, more balanced. And yet when people use the term, I think they’re using it to denote the opposite of that. Do you have a reaction to that?

Charlie Warzel:

I would agree, and I think they are using it often in a derogatory way. And I would say what I have found really interesting about this moment is that all of those things that I was telling you about this, the editorial bureaucracies, the stuff, fact-checkers, editors, things like that, all of that is in place, like I just said, to provide a higher quality of journalism.

But all of that is used, especially by people like let’s say Elon Musk or the MAGA movement. All of that is used, actually, against mainstream media, as a way to denigrate it, as a way to show either bias or to elicit distrust. This idea of editing. I spent a lot of time in the first Trump administration, covering their right-wing media ecosystem and all these shock jocks coming up through Twitter and other places. And they were obsessed with this notion that we are going to livestream everything. If we’re going talk about something, we’re going to write it at 150,000 words. We’re going to document, document. Alex Jones is on the air for 22 hours a week or something like that, just simply talking.

And the idea behind that is we’re going to give you something “unfiltered”. We’re not hiding anything. We’re documenting everything. You deserve to know everything, and that is very much the ethos of say, the internet. Information wants to be free; you should be able to find anything you want. And it’s very easy, then, to take that and turn that towards the mainstream media and say, “Look, they’re not showing you everything. They’re editing absolutely everything.” And that is, I think, reasonable.

But to answer your point, I think there are lots of people out there who do feel like the mainstream media is not doing a good job of let’s just say, obviously, covering Donald Trump or holding Donald Trump to account. And there is this feeling that they want the media to drop any supposition that they are objective and this idea that no one can really be objective when there is a figure like Donald Trump, when there is a right-wing movement like the MAGA movement coming through our country and taking it over.

And I understand that criticism. I think that that’s very fair. When you see people responding to insurgent media organizations like let’s say The Bulwark, I think what they see in that is someone who is responding to the crisis in a way that’s not objective and that they feel is so much more authentic and is actually getting the job done. I think that there’s something to that. That’s definitely a real thing.

Preet Bharara:

Stay tuned. There’s more coming up after this.

So explain the following phenomenon to me. And maybe I’m overstating it, but on the one hand, people have become conspiracy theorists. They don’t buy what legacy media tells them. They see reporting; they assume it’s a lie. Some of the people they revere in politics or in business will say, “This article from New York Times is full of lies. It leaves things out.” And Fox News, by the way, I imagine you would also call a legacy media outlet because it’s been around a long time.

So on the one hand, there’s the belief that we’re just being fed lies. On the other hand, I see repeatedly, completely false statements, misinformation made up out of whole cloth. I’ll give you an example in a second. Completely made-up stuff that people are just utterly credulous about.

So a quick example. On Twitter, I saw someone post the other day. My old boss, Senator Schumer. It said, “Senator Schumer’s annual salary is X dollars, whatever it is, 200,000 or whatever it is, per year, and he’s only been in public service. And yet he has a net worth of $80 million.” And there’s reply after reply after reply by people who, I assume, although maybe I shouldn’t assume, but I’m going to assume for the purpose of this question, hate the legacy media, think it’s full of nonsense. Who are replying, not incredulously or not by going and looking at the financial disclosures, but are saying, “He should be in jail. He should be investigated. Par for the course.”

Response after response after response, and I think these are some of the same people who think The Atlantic is full of crap. Can you explain that? Because by the way, just for the record, he’s not worth $80 million.

Charlie Warzel:

This is happening all the time. That’s an example of it. The one that I’ve seen right now that’s going through is Elon Musk and other people are throwing out USAID numbers and stuff from the federal government, what the federal government is funding. And there’s a bunch of viral stuff going around that the federal government is giving millions and millions of dollars to Politico because they’re trying to fund Politico. And this is an easily debunked misconstruing of the facts. Those are Politico Pro subscriptions that different people and different agencies are purchasing in order to get information that they can use to do their jobs.

So many people have believed that immediate lie or misconstruing of the facts, and it doesn’t really matter, because there is such a durable media ecosystem now that exists on the right that it travels from these people, who are totally credulous, like you said, about it. They believe these people. They believe what they’re saying, and it moves its way up through that system. And then you have on Thursday, Donald Trump posted about it on Truth Social, in all caps, very mad. And it’s this way in which this lie just becomes canon in this side of it.

Those people, yes, you’re totally right, would also say that The Atlantic publishes propaganda and gets things wrong and makes up their sources and lies and all that stuff. And I think what has happened here is that there has been this sorting into two completely separate, completely durable media ecosystems. There are terms for this that’s like the filter bubbles that people have, and I think people have sorted into the information that they feel comfortable with, but also, more importantly, the purveyors of the information they feel comfortable with.

Preet Bharara:

But is that really right? Because sometimes a purveyor is unknown to these people. It’s a random person posting on Twitter. It’s not Elon Musk. It’s not Donald Trump. And it would be one thing if the trend was, “Look, we are skeptical of and apply critical reasoning to facts and stories brought to us by legacy media, which makes us now critical of and skeptical of all media.”

So what happens? It strikes me, and I wonder if you think this is correct or way off the mark. It’s really just about wanting the news that you want to hear. So every once in a while, a legacy media organization will report something that actually jibes with the viewpoint of a Trump supporter, and they’ll say, “Well, I guess even a broken clock is right twice a day.” And on the other hand, people are buying into information and facts and reporting that fits with the truth that they want to hear, as opposed to what we’re told is the critique that certain news outlets are biased and misinforming. Is that what it is?

Charlie Warzel:

Yes, to some degree. The sorting is based off of this. From a psychological standpoint, it is very difficult to break away from your preconceived notions, from the biases that you have. It’s actually psychologically painful to do that. But not only that. Our information systems and the politics that we have and the culture that’s developed around all of that is so very tribal. It’s not just like the news; it’s your interpretation of how the world is and all the people around you who share that.

And that’s why I use that word sorting. If you are someone who has deep, let’s say, progressive politics or deep MAGA politics or whatever, culturally, you are forming bonds and relationships with other people around that. It’s become harder and harder to reckon with information that’s outside of that.

When we talk about disinformation, I wrote a story with a wonderful media studies professor named Mike Caulfield, who has been reading-

Preet Bharara:

Yes, I have the piece in front of me. Can I just read you a line from it?

Charlie Warzel:

Yeah, please.

Preet Bharara:

It’s so great. You together wrote, “Lately, our independent work has coalesced around a particular shared idea that misinformation is powerful, not because it changes minds, but because it allows people to maintain their beliefs in light of growing evidence to the contrary. The internet may function not so much as a brainwashing engine but as a justification machine.”

That boggles my mind a bit, and I think it’s right. Can you elaborate on that, as you’re about to?

Charlie Warzel:

Yeah, absolutely. I’m glad you read it. You saved me from having to describe it. Just used my words to make me sound better than. I think that this idea of the justification machine is also about this idea that information has been made so readily available. We have this expectation that we must be able to access any information. And also, this expectation throughout the internet, that we have the ability to parse it, and that we can understand it, and everyone should respect our intelligence enough to allow that to happen.

But what’s really happened is humans are really good at being evidence-gatherers to help form their worldviews. And when you live in a world where every piece of information is available at your fingertips, that has changed a lot of our behaviors. It has really supercharged that, and I think that what’s really important here, a lot of people read that piece and said, “Oh, yeah, I knew it.” Which is part of the point of the piece. Everyone feels this way.

When I go and I look at something on Twitter or Bluesky or wherever I am, and I see a piece of information, I am, consciously or subconsciously, filtering it through my own worldview. I am trying to either quickly justify it or not. And if you’re a smart and savvy media consumer, you catch yourself doing that. But I can see it myself. If I see something that really doesn’t sound right to me, I’m immediately skeptical. I’ll go research who that person is, to try to build a case against it in my own head and make sure.

Now, if it turns out it’s bulletproof, I’d like to think I would be able to admit that, but it works the exact opposite way. I’m very quick to retweet or re-share something from a source that I already know and I trust, that very much validates the things that I’m thinking and feeling at that current moment. I have a built-in lack of skepticism.

Anyway, that sort of tendency, writ large and powered by the social media, this news influencer culture, the politicians who have changed the way that they interact and who are influencers themselves, it has created this culture where we are all evidence-forging all the time. And we’re doing so to try to protect this worldview and all these relationships and this understanding of the world, and it’s so easy.

And that is what the attention economy has wrought, I think, to some degree. I mean, if you look at someone like Alex Jones, he’s obviously been sued and maybe forced to sell his company and all that. But prior to doing that, he made an incredible amount of money, basically providing evidence and justification for people to believe the things that they wanted to believe, whether it was through conspiracy theories or just interpretation of every single news event. And that’s incredibly lucrative because you’re providing a service to people to keep them from having to change their mind, to experience that cognitive dissonance, which is just so psychologically painful.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, so it’s not that the modern environment and technology and social media has changed people. Human nature remains the same. There’s now a way at persuasion and taking advantage of what was already human nature in a way that wasn’t in existence before, when there were three networks.

Charlie Warzel:

And this is why I say it’s important who these people are following and this filter bubble idea. What’s so important about it is we are sorting into these camps based off the people who we believe we can trust. The influencer news economy, whether it’s people on Substack who are writing about progressive things, or it’s Charlie Kirk or Jack Posobiec, or some of these MAGA influencers, people like that. There are these parasocial relationships that form. There’s this notion that you know the person, that you can trust them, and a lot of that is done by flattering people, by giving people what they want.

Another term in this universe is this idea of audience capture. And it happens to lots of people, where you start providing a certain slant on the world, a certain type of content, a certain whatever, and it gets really popular, and you start responding to that incentive by upping the stakes. And there’s this ratcheting-up, in terms of what you’re giving them. And I’ve seen and heard from different people say, there’s a point where some folks come to, and they say, “I’ve sort of been radicalized by my audience, and my audience has radicalized me.” And then there’s plenty of people who won’t admit that.

Preet Bharara:

So what’s the solution to all this, in the remaining two minutes, Charlie?

Charlie Warzel:

I don’t think that there’s an easy solution. The way I think about this is I think that the information revolution that we’re all experiencing, it has been, let’s just say, 28 to 30 years since the commercial internet as we know it has been ported into enough homes for it to start to change the way that we see the world and get information. It’s an amazing revolution, in terms of media technology, that is on the order of the printing press. I think could be as big as the Industrial Revolution. This is a massive societal change.

Think about Facebook and the idea that 2.5 billion people are connected on one platform. There has never been such a connection of human beings on one centralized network in the world. The idea that Facebook is now 21 years old. The idea that in 21 years, we could all adapt and understand and develop cultural norms around all of this is, I think, just unrealistic. I think that we are going to have to spend generations developing these norms, understanding how to talk to each other, understanding what these platforms are doing to us.

One of the best-selling books in the last year is The Anxious Generation, by Jonathan Haidt, and that speaks to a real fear, a real concern that the phones in our pockets are doing things to kids, but everyone feels that. And yet the science around that, the social science, is pretty inconclusive.

So we are grappling with this notion that something has really fundamentally changed, not within us, but in the way that we react to the information that we’re constantly being bombarded with. And I think it’s going to take a long time to figure out what it is, what it’s doing to us, how to best protect ourselves and our attention against it, how to develop a politics, how to develop a culture, a relationship to each other, a kindness. Learn how to speak to each other again in this way.

And I don’t know if that’s going to happen in a really legible way, in even my generation. I think we’re just in this period of great upheaval, and we need to understand what’s happening to ourselves first.

Preet Bharara:

So on that note, Charlie, I guess the solution I’m going to posit is we will get there one podcast episode at a time.

Charlie Warzel:

That’s right. You’re doing it. You’re the solution.

Preet Bharara:

We’re trying. We all are. It takes a village. Charlie Warzel, thanks so much for being with us.

Charlie Warzel:

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Preet Bharara:

For more analysis of legal and political issues making the headlines, become a member of the CAFE Insider. Members get access to exclusive content, including the weekly podcast I host with former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance. Head to cafe.com/insider to sign up for a trial. That’s cafe.com/insider.

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Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The deputy editor is Celine Rohr. The editorial producers are Noa Azulai and Jake Kaplan. The associate producer is Claudia Hernández, and the CAFE team is Matthew Billy, Nat Weiner, and Liana Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. As always, stay tuned.