In France, there is a powerful left-wing politician named Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
He was senator for decades. He was previously a minister. He has run for President multiple times. People close him describe him as a political beast.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Luc_Mélenchon
On october 3th 2023, the newspaper Le Monde published an absolutely astonishing investigation into his girlfriend. They reveal that his girlfriend SCREAMS and HUMILIATES ordinary people. And he knows that.
3 days later, on october 6th 2023, Melenchon took a trip to Morocco.
Believing he was far away for any camera, he made a cynical confession to moroccan university students:
“I really don’t care what newspapers reveal. The vast majority of voters don’t read newspapers. They watch online videos”
"We are now in the great era of social media"
Elon Musk regularly attacks the New York Times.
On social media, he urges people to not read it.
That’s because the New York Times has published incredible stories about him.
Elon Musk knowingly lied about the safety of self-driving vehicles. Multiple people were killed
Musk is sexually harassing SpaceX engineers
The Musk Foundation is breaking the law:
When powerful politicians and businessmen tell you “don’t read newspapers”, they aren’t trying to give you good life advice.
It’s a manipulation attempt.
Your post contains zero examples of anyone telling anyone not to read newspapers. The Mélenchon example (according to your own words!) is him pointing out that voters already don’t read newspapers, not that they shouldn’t. The Musk examples are about one specific newspaper, and even there he isn’t telling us not to read it. (FWIW, I would never have known or cared about any of these examples before reading this post.)
So what exactly are you trying to tell us with this post?
I don’t know a lot about French politics and have no opinions about Mélenchon, but if he said something to the effect of “we are now in the great era of social media”, then I agree with him on that. It is, in my mind, enormous societal progress that lots of people now get their news from other ordinary people on websites/apps (“social media”) in addition, or even instead of, legacy media which sees it as its job to enforce an “Overton window”. It’s democratization of knowledge and information sharing, why should I think that is a bad thing?
It’s kind of ironic that you’re posting this to a social media site, TBH.
Yeah. About that…
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/facebook-overseas-alberta-separtism-9.7223966
What about that?
You see, I grew up in the era of “You” being Time Person of the Year: https://time.com/6258607/you-time-person-of-the-year-2006/
I don’t see why, 20 years later, I should now think that the same phenomenon is a bad thing, but maybe you can explain that to me.