A decade ago, as a young war reporter for Vice News, I had the nagging feeling that one day I’d find my wizened older self, like an old NME journalist droning on about punk, reminiscing about the time when we brash millennial upstarts had the world of TV newsgathering at our feet. But I never expected it to be so soon.
The young get old and revolutions end up eating their own: and the death of the flagship Vice News Tonight show and drastic downsizing of the Vice News platform, just days after the closing of Buzzfeed News, heralds the closing of the era when the New York new media giants bestrode the news world like strutting conquerors. With the heavily indebted Vice empire reportedly circling on the edge of bankruptcy, and struggling to find a buyer, the media landscape of the 2010s already looks like history. As Ben Judah observed: “The early 2010s were a moment where Buzzfeed News and Vice News gave you the impression you didn’t have to do journalism like the New York Times or the BBC. Them shuttering is telling us, actually, there’s only the way they do it at the New York Times and the BBC.”
Back then, the world looked very different. When the Vice News channel launched on YouTube in 2014, its parent company’s reputation for achingly arch and semi-ironically offensive content aimed at jaded hipsters caused legacy broadcasters to scoff at the idea of their cocky, inexperienced journalists challenging them on their own turf. Within months, their laughter stopped: networks such as the BBC and CNN were now terrified that Vice held the key to the future of news. Vice News went where no one else would go, gaining access to the most difficult stories, and throwing itself into the thickest action with studied indifference. Young people, who had always been disregarded as news consumers, were enraptured by the hard-edged, thrilling content from the worst places on earth; elderly execs and money men threw sponsorship at the company in an attempt to capture some of the magic for their own ailing brands. The future of news was young and online, and there was no going back.
Historians of the craft of newsgathering will record that Vice News changed the visual grammar of the medium. By marrying a cinematic visual style with the tempo and immediacy of breaking stories, and pioneering the use of handheld DSLR cameras, Vice News re-aestheticised TV news. And by having its young reporters talk casually to the audience, like friends, in the middle of the world’s worst chaos, the old world of buttoned-up correspondents stiffly lecturing the camera suddenly looked like a relic from the age of black and white. But while the big networks quickly learned to copy Vice’s style to the point it has become the norm, the fundamental challenge of all news broadcasting — how to make the most difficult and expensive content on earth pay for itself — had still not been solved. In the end, it was all a mirage.
As is the nature of the trade, it was always a source of pride, and of glittering awards, to obtain better combat footage than anyone else: always getting closer to the action, dancing at the edge of death like a gladiator in the amphitheatre for the audience’s thrill and delectation. The highest word of praise from an exec was “gnarly”. But what neither fans nor critics of what they saw as our recklessness understood was that the “bang-bang” was merely a vehicle with which to smuggle in serious analytical reportage of poorly-understood conflicts and revolutions. Vice’s central insight was that if you framed the story right, and shot it well enough, you could persuade teens and early twentysomethings to watch in-depth explorations of Syrian rebel justice systems, or the intricacies of South Sudan’s civil war. Middle-aged execs from traditional networks had always claimed young people didn’t care about granular detail, or distant wars in Africa: but this (apart from stories about drugs) was always by far the most popular content, judging from YouTube views and comments. The audience never demands dumbing-down: viewers want nuance, shades of grey, and moral ambiguity. They want to see the world as it is, not as it ought to be.
While the rewards in the early days were mismatched to the risk, the degree of experience offered to young journalists was unrivalled, a huge draw to those with an adventurous streak. Journalists at the beginning of their careers were given access to stories the networks reserved for their hardened veterans, and repaid that trust with a fervid dedication to their craft. I was a green 31-year-old reporter when I started, with only the Libyan war, Tunisian revolution and a strange months-long sojourn with tribal rebels in Sudan under my belt. Vice gave me the freedom to follow the Malian army into bloody battle against jihadist rebels, experience the Egyptian coup from the Islamist side, return to Syria over and over again during the course of the war and follow the Isis story from their initially underplayed rise to their final desert gotterdammerung.
And like Isis, Vice was a 2010s phenomenon that wrongly thought it could take on the giants and win. Perhaps that strange kinship between the decade’s two great disruptors is why Vice News was the only western network Isis let embed with them in Syria and Iraq. This isn’t as wild as it sounds – Isis watched us and we watched them. As the Syria reporter for years, focusing on Isis, I watched the terrorist group copy Vice’s style in their videos as Very Online western millennials took over their output, syncing cinematic DSLR footage with hypnotic music and thrilling action sequences.
Young Western Isis fighters and social media influencers were constantly messaging me on Twitter, critiquing my films, and either asking me to join them or threatening to kidnap and behead me next time I deployed. I have the unusual distinction, as a legacy of my time at Vice News, of having featured in three Isis videos, twice using extracts from my films, and once combat footage of them shooting (unbeknown to them at the time) at my Landcruiser. Isis won the video battle: they had the resources of a state behind them, a demonic desire to shock and horrify, and could orchestrate combat for the cameras. But ultimately neither could maintain their exponential growth beyond the 2010s: both had dramatically overestimated their chance of taking over the world.
Careering skyward after their Isis scoop, Vice upped the sponsorship stakes with a deal to make HBO a prestigious nightly news series: and when the new network execs came in to run the show, Vice purged the young and idealistic journalists who had risked their lives to win the hipster bible journalistic credibility. Friends and colleagues who had risked their lives to produce groundbreaking coverage from Ukraine, Syria and the Central African Republic were let go with a lack of sentiment unusual even by the standards of America’s media industry. Vice News gave Vice the credibility to raise money from investors to furiously expand the rest of its brand, but the newsgathering itself was too expensive to sustain. For a while, Vice was making money, but little went to the journalists who originally built the brand.
Even still, the common online narrative that the glossier “new Vice” was a paltry shadow of “old Vice” is hard to maintain. Under the new regime, journalists were paid well, and professional security advisors were brought in to ensure the company never paid the toll in deaths that other networks gossiped were just about to happen. In any case, Vice News’s most sustained string of awards came under the new management, and some of the work from Syria that I am most proud of came under the nightly HBO banner, along with my only Emmy. Even up to the very end, long after the now-greying old hands like me had moved out to pasture, Vice News’s coverage of conflicts in Afghanistan, Yemen and Ukraine outclassed the world’s biggest networks, raking in awards: Vice News Tonight closes with more Emmy nominations than any of its big name rivals for five years running.
Perhaps what really destroyed Vice News’s hope of making TV news into a profitable industry was the rise of Trump. The political polarisation of American life after 2016 saw viewers drift away from whatever interest they showed in confusing wars in far-off places for an obsession with their own internal conflict. The legacy cable networks such as CNN, MSNBC and Fox revived their ailing fortunes through a constant focus on the Trump reality show, and the rest of the world retreated back into obscurity — unless it could be viewed through Trump’s prism. As the online world polarised, Vice’s original YouTube fanbase, which skewed young male and often hard Right, vocally resented the radically progressive orientation of much of the company’s new output.
At the same time every publication from the New York Times to Teen Vogue began speaking in the same voice, Vice no longer sounded distinct. The punk magazine-turned-megabrand had gone corporate, and now sounded like any other American corporation, only more so. Vice, which had won acclaim for dispassionately showing viewers how the world really is, now looked excessively concerned with its own virtue. As American society polarised, Vice could never fully capture the newly divided, inward-looking zeitgeist – stunts like reading the entire Mueller Report live on air for four hours didn’t possess quite the same old magic. HBO switched its patronage to newer, DC insider platforms such as Axios, showing the world as viewed from the top down, not the bottom up, and Vice News moved to new and less lucrative deals on smaller cable networks. While the quality of foreign coverage remained high, and awards kept piling up, the ambition dwindled. Vice had set out to conquer the legacy broadcasters, but found itself reliant on their largesse to keep the show on the road.
For a few short years, Vice News looked like it had found the secret to making news pay by showing viewers the world as it really is, far from Western capitals, rubbing viewers’ noses in the darkness of reality. But news is expensive and talk is cheap: we have reverted to an era of talking heads and studio debates, where perhaps only state broadcasters have the funding and desire to present their chosen images of reality to the outside world, with all that implies. Bored young men who want to see brutal images of combat can now get their kicks watching Ukraine snuff clips on Twitter. For good or ill — I still can’t decide — working for Vice News over seven years forcefully reshaped my worldview, by confronting my original impeccably liberal assumptions about how the world worked with constant immersion in the hard reality of tribal, religious and ethnic conflict. Young and idealistic, I thought I could change the world: instead the world changed me.
But as my old colleague, Vice News’ former Latin America bureau chief and chronicler of Mexico’s bloody internal conflict Daniel Hernandez wrote in an elegy on Twitter, “It was truly about going to countries that ‘didn’t matter’, diving into gnarly security situations — it’s a miracle no one — for conflict reporting in Syria, Ukraine, Mexico, Venezuela … Just a wild, idealistic time. Honored to have been there at its birth.” Vice News was the future, once. If even they can’t make hard foreign news pay, then perhaps it has no future.
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SubscribeI leave it to Mr. Roussinos to know why Vice ultimately crashed. He has the first hand knowledge. But to claim that the NYT or BBC is the model to follow would be laughable if not so sad.
The BBC lives by government mandate (a required subscription fee). End that requirement and the BBC’s one-sided news coverage (really a propaganda outlet) would struggle mightily.
The NYT at least functions without government mandate to buy its output. But the gray lady has long lost it’s journalist chops. Never does it question whatever fear mongering the left is peddling. Whether its an ice free arctic summer, to millions of people will soon die from from global warming – such predictions are never questioned and when the catastrophe fails to appear, the NYT just moves on. That’s not journalism, that’s purely propaganda.
The dissemination of news reporting has dispersed as Mr. Roussinos has to know to numerous outlets. Very few trust media, for good reason. Opinion has moved to the front page and rarely is a dissenting opinion allowed. As a country we may need straight reporting, or at least dissenting views on controversial topics, but there is only one Unherd. Sad, but true.
I didn’t get the sense that Aris is saying that the BBC/NYT is the model to follow, but that that’s all we’re left with for the moment. Which is consistent with his being on Unherd no?.
I read it that way as well, but if the commenter wishes to assail BBC and NYT, I’m all ears:)
I read it that way as well, but if the commenter wishes to assail BBC and NYT, I’m all ears:)
Journalists and progressives are spawned in the same hive mind. Very similar to the Borg when you think about it.
That is the sort of generalised negative comment which is so sweeping as to be almost meaningless. So, in your world there is no such thing as journalists trying to report objectively?
That is the sort of generalised negative comment which is so sweeping as to be almost meaningless. So, in your world there is no such thing as journalists trying to report objectively?
I didn’t get the sense that Aris is saying that the BBC/NYT is the model to follow, but that that’s all we’re left with for the moment. Which is consistent with his being on Unherd no?.
Journalists and progressives are spawned in the same hive mind. Very similar to the Borg when you think about it.
I leave it to Mr. Roussinos to know why Vice ultimately crashed. He has the first hand knowledge. But to claim that the NYT or BBC is the model to follow would be laughable if not so sad.
The BBC lives by government mandate (a required subscription fee). End that requirement and the BBC’s one-sided news coverage (really a propaganda outlet) would struggle mightily.
The NYT at least functions without government mandate to buy its output. But the gray lady has long lost it’s journalist chops. Never does it question whatever fear mongering the left is peddling. Whether its an ice free arctic summer, to millions of people will soon die from from global warming – such predictions are never questioned and when the catastrophe fails to appear, the NYT just moves on. That’s not journalism, that’s purely propaganda.
The dissemination of news reporting has dispersed as Mr. Roussinos has to know to numerous outlets. Very few trust media, for good reason. Opinion has moved to the front page and rarely is a dissenting opinion allowed. As a country we may need straight reporting, or at least dissenting views on controversial topics, but there is only one Unherd. Sad, but true.
“Them shuttering is telling us, actually, there’s only the way they do it at the New York Times and the BBC.””
That is extremely depressing. I’ve long since given up on the BBC – at least as far as anything political is concerned. And the NYT…”All the news that’s fit to print” has now turned into “all the narrative that’s fit to print”. Watching the NYT journalists tiptoe around a very basic and obvious fact – that Biden is too old to run for a 2nd term as POTUS – is both comedic and frightening. It confirms to me that the paper is trying (ineffectually) to create the world which it wants too see rather than the one which actually exists. And all it does is insult the intelligence of most of its readership.
I never really engaged with Vice to be honest. My other half was into it and we watched several interesting things about the war in Syria together. My impression recently has been that it has swung too much in the direction of inward-looking things like identity issues, transgender etc. And consequently, I just flicked by.
When so much is happening out in the world, it is disturbing just how much airtime these peripheral topics get. Perhaps we’re just all so overcome by the thought of the bigger dramas which are happening out there that looking inwards and expending energy contemplating our own collective navels and thinking about whether we can still say “breastfeeding” feels like a shield. We can feel like the bigger picture is all good and we’re still in control of things.
No wonder Vice crumbled. Hard-hitting real world reporting just isn’t going to land with a populace engaged in mass displacement activity, trying to avoid the real world.
VICE did their best work when the two best friends who founded it (Shane Smith and Gavin McInnes) were both still there. They spent the late 90s establishing the brand, and then started pumping out more serious, high quality content (esp. video) through the 2000s.
Gavin left in 2008 due to “creative differences”, and in hindsight that was when they had peaked. Post 2008 was the beginning of the “inward-looking” period you correctly describe, where the magazine became much more identity / woke focused.
Gavin McInnes = Proud Boy. Yikes.
Gavin McInnes = Proud Boy. Yikes.
There is not much intelligence to be insulted in the consumers of what the NYC and the Guardian publish.
Perfectly reasonable comment not deserving downvotes.
Perfectly reasonable comment not deserving downvotes.
Good points, in response to a good article (at least to someone who spent nearly 50 years in journalism and over 35 years running a press agency) but the problem for Vice is the problem for the BBC..or the Guardian…or Fox or CNN..or the Redditch Indicator.
Digitisation changed everything, it enabled the internet to emerge and one universal function of the internet is to disintermediate the processes in the provision of ‘news’.
Legacy brands do have some ..er…legacy power, but the slow death of our old style media has been like wet rot seeping up through a building. Weeklies and small evenings are all but dead, provincial dailies, and some nationals are shells of the organisations they used to be and while all media had to migrate towards video, even TV news outfits are feeling the rot rising.
Vice wasn’t a new model for news, it needed either subscribers or adverts. These both now ceaselessly trek around the internet looking for more and more eyeballs, in more and more places.
A.I. will likely complete the extinction event that digitisation of word, picture and video began.
VICE did their best work when the two best friends who founded it (Shane Smith and Gavin McInnes) were both still there. They spent the late 90s establishing the brand, and then started pumping out more serious, high quality content (esp. video) through the 2000s.
Gavin left in 2008 due to “creative differences”, and in hindsight that was when they had peaked. Post 2008 was the beginning of the “inward-looking” period you correctly describe, where the magazine became much more identity / woke focused.
There is not much intelligence to be insulted in the consumers of what the NYC and the Guardian publish.
Good points, in response to a good article (at least to someone who spent nearly 50 years in journalism and over 35 years running a press agency) but the problem for Vice is the problem for the BBC..or the Guardian…or Fox or CNN..or the Redditch Indicator.
Digitisation changed everything, it enabled the internet to emerge and one universal function of the internet is to disintermediate the processes in the provision of ‘news’.
Legacy brands do have some ..er…legacy power, but the slow death of our old style media has been like wet rot seeping up through a building. Weeklies and small evenings are all but dead, provincial dailies, and some nationals are shells of the organisations they used to be and while all media had to migrate towards video, even TV news outfits are feeling the rot rising.
Vice wasn’t a new model for news, it needed either subscribers or adverts. These both now ceaselessly trek around the internet looking for more and more eyeballs, in more and more places.
A.I. will likely complete the extinction event that digitisation of word, picture and video began.
“Them shuttering is telling us, actually, there’s only the way they do it at the New York Times and the BBC.””
That is extremely depressing. I’ve long since given up on the BBC – at least as far as anything political is concerned. And the NYT…”All the news that’s fit to print” has now turned into “all the narrative that’s fit to print”. Watching the NYT journalists tiptoe around a very basic and obvious fact – that Biden is too old to run for a 2nd term as POTUS – is both comedic and frightening. It confirms to me that the paper is trying (ineffectually) to create the world which it wants too see rather than the one which actually exists. And all it does is insult the intelligence of most of its readership.
I never really engaged with Vice to be honest. My other half was into it and we watched several interesting things about the war in Syria together. My impression recently has been that it has swung too much in the direction of inward-looking things like identity issues, transgender etc. And consequently, I just flicked by.
When so much is happening out in the world, it is disturbing just how much airtime these peripheral topics get. Perhaps we’re just all so overcome by the thought of the bigger dramas which are happening out there that looking inwards and expending energy contemplating our own collective navels and thinking about whether we can still say “breastfeeding” feels like a shield. We can feel like the bigger picture is all good and we’re still in control of things.
No wonder Vice crumbled. Hard-hitting real world reporting just isn’t going to land with a populace engaged in mass displacement activity, trying to avoid the real world.
The regular news used to do this sort of thing quite well. When I was young, in the late 60’s, 70’s and into the 80’s the early evening news was local, usually for us a fire in a Philadelphia factory, weather, sports. The six o’clock national news was a mix of national and international, with a lot less political coverage than today. The star national reporters were lefties but they mostly just reported the news.
Bill Clinton turned the presidency into a clown show with the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The news industry seems to have been obsessed with interior scandal rather than international news since then.
My 38 year old international news junkie son has watched news clips from the 80’s on YouTube and asked me if the news really used to be like that. Yes it did. At some point in the past 30 years the news industry moved from reporting facts to creating and polarizing public opinion. Just like in those old dystopian novels…
You’ve nailed it. The fact your son found the news from before the “opinions” era so strange is telling.
Here in the UK, i put the watershed moment as the first Gulf War, when the BBC decided it needed to start focusing on it’s anti-US bias in it’s reportage. It made the pushing of Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait sound like a close-run thing and bigged up his Republican Guards as if they were a combination of the SAS and Seals; until they fled on the road back to Baghdad.
This article sounds like Aris Roussinos is in search his raison d’etre. I hope he finds it – he’s got a long time to live – unless he goes back to reporting from the front line.
the author does mention the role of money in in-depth on -site reporting from truly terrible places. Before cable and competition the networks, and I assume this includes the BBC, had much bigger budgets to do a good job. The collapse of real news does coincide with the advent of competition for audience share.
The Hunter Biden story has the potential to be as big as Watergate but there are no Woodward and Bernsteins out there trying to make a name for themselves, regardless of who goes down. Times have really changed.
I agree with you. Lately I fear that the role of the media is to pander and flatter rather than question or investigate. In short, journalists have become a courtier class.
News disappeared as ad revenue tumbled. Google won the revenue. Until we correct that model somehow, clicks are all that counts and that relates to selective eyeballs. Anger and polarization create conflict and eyeballs.
You could see this disntermediation process coming as far back as the late 90s..it got an accelerant from the 2007 Credit Crunch when ad money dried up and forced many news organisations to really face the future… or rather, analyse the future but refuse to face what the analyses demanded.
Vice and Buzzfeed had more to do with the 90s and early 2000s ‘democratic dividend’ and the beginning of the Chinese deflation (ie lots of money looking for next big things).
Absent the money (hence the reference to 2007/8 as a watershed for both legacy media and the vibey startups buzzing all around them) absent the scaffolding that supported them.
Digitisation of content (words, pictures, hraphics, video) enabled the internet, the internet everywhere seeks to disintermediate, A.I will now hyper accelerate that.
I agree with you. Lately I fear that the role of the media is to pander and flatter rather than question or investigate. In short, journalists have become a courtier class.
News disappeared as ad revenue tumbled. Google won the revenue. Until we correct that model somehow, clicks are all that counts and that relates to selective eyeballs. Anger and polarization create conflict and eyeballs.
You could see this disntermediation process coming as far back as the late 90s..it got an accelerant from the 2007 Credit Crunch when ad money dried up and forced many news organisations to really face the future… or rather, analyse the future but refuse to face what the analyses demanded.
Vice and Buzzfeed had more to do with the 90s and early 2000s ‘democratic dividend’ and the beginning of the Chinese deflation (ie lots of money looking for next big things).
Absent the money (hence the reference to 2007/8 as a watershed for both legacy media and the vibey startups buzzing all around them) absent the scaffolding that supported them.
Digitisation of content (words, pictures, hraphics, video) enabled the internet, the internet everywhere seeks to disintermediate, A.I will now hyper accelerate that.
the author does mention the role of money in in-depth on -site reporting from truly terrible places. Before cable and competition the networks, and I assume this includes the BBC, had much bigger budgets to do a good job. The collapse of real news does coincide with the advent of competition for audience share.
The Hunter Biden story has the potential to be as big as Watergate but there are no Woodward and Bernsteins out there trying to make a name for themselves, regardless of who goes down. Times have really changed.
If you thought Uncle Walter Cronkite was giving you the straight goods you best think again. When the Democrats nominated George McGovern for president he was the most left-wing candidate up to that time. McGovern mused about offering Cronkite the vice-presidential slot. Hearing about it later, Cronkite said, “I would have accepted in a New York minute.”
Certainly Cronkite was an early adapter in the news as editorial game. Still the news was more straightforward and more relevant to this article there was much more international coverage than today.
Certainly Cronkite was an early adapter in the news as editorial game. Still the news was more straightforward and more relevant to this article there was much more international coverage than today.
“A Face in the Crowd” 1957, “Network” 1976, those film commentaries on commercial media were prophetic in their way I suppose. Seems it has ever been such. I remember Cronkite. To be honest, early on became suspicious of him and the other’s like him because I was fortunate enough to be able to listen to Pacifica Radio’s KPFK as a kid in the late ’60s on. Late at night rebroadcasts and interviews with “boots on the ground” low end people from the State Dept, returning G.I.’s from Vietnam speaking about the Phoenix Program, CIA whistle blowers, etc. Rebroadcasts of Malcolm X, recordings that weren’t meant for white people to hear by Elijah Muhammad. So much more. The fact that Cronkite and his ilk didn’t cover these things for me was enough to lose faith as a little kid. I’d hear about things first on Pacifica, then a year or two, sometime three years later in the mainstream but with much less depth. Particularly, repeatedly seeing Dan Rather’s reporting of the Zapruder film of JFK’s assassination. Rather asserting that “His head went forward with considerable violence” and using his body to show how the President’s body reacted. I was hearing on KPFK early recordings of other eye witnesses that were there when it happened that said just the opposite. I wondered why it wasn’t Cronkite that was given the chance to view and report on it, I thought that was “fishy”. But, repetition is a form of hypnotism and repeatedly seeing Rather tell his eye witness account from a film that at some point everyone would be able to see, I began to accept his account over the others. But then after I watched Zapruder’s film when it was aired in a L.A. T.V. newscast in 1969, well, I never trusted mainstream news again. I remembered Rather from the coverage of the Dem Primary in Chicago in ’68 and his reaction to the police abuse, I thought he was a bit of a sissy. But after I watched the Zapruder film, I knew he lied, and probably did so because he was told to. From then on, he was trash to me. I’ve always wonder how his career would have gone if he had the integrity to tell the truth? I came to believe Operation Mockingbird never ended. I watched T.V. news then for the visuals, not for the reporting. Then I quit watching T.V. all together about ’78. Just read small press periodicals from the “left & right” along with KPFK. Since the ’80s, Pacifica isn’t worth much anymore either. Now there are investigative journalists I search for. Generally I have no loyalty to any outlet or platform. I did get a bit excited about Vice News early on, but just the same ol’ same ol’ PC crap now. I avoid them now because they pissed me off selling out like that. Just individuals I have come to respect, even when I don’t agree with their political slant. But as ever, it’s a game of “Wack-a-Mole” finding places where they are able to publish. It’s good to see some are able to stay in one spot they have more control of now. How long will that last…? smh…
You’ve nailed it. The fact your son found the news from before the “opinions” era so strange is telling.
Here in the UK, i put the watershed moment as the first Gulf War, when the BBC decided it needed to start focusing on it’s anti-US bias in it’s reportage. It made the pushing of Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait sound like a close-run thing and bigged up his Republican Guards as if they were a combination of the SAS and Seals; until they fled on the road back to Baghdad.
This article sounds like Aris Roussinos is in search his raison d’etre. I hope he finds it – he’s got a long time to live – unless he goes back to reporting from the front line.
If you thought Uncle Walter Cronkite was giving you the straight goods you best think again. When the Democrats nominated George McGovern for president he was the most left-wing candidate up to that time. McGovern mused about offering Cronkite the vice-presidential slot. Hearing about it later, Cronkite said, “I would have accepted in a New York minute.”
“A Face in the Crowd” 1957, “Network” 1976, those film commentaries on commercial media were prophetic in their way I suppose. Seems it has ever been such. I remember Cronkite. To be honest, early on became suspicious of him and the other’s like him because I was fortunate enough to be able to listen to Pacifica Radio’s KPFK as a kid in the late ’60s on. Late at night rebroadcasts and interviews with “boots on the ground” low end people from the State Dept, returning G.I.’s from Vietnam speaking about the Phoenix Program, CIA whistle blowers, etc. Rebroadcasts of Malcolm X, recordings that weren’t meant for white people to hear by Elijah Muhammad. So much more. The fact that Cronkite and his ilk didn’t cover these things for me was enough to lose faith as a little kid. I’d hear about things first on Pacifica, then a year or two, sometime three years later in the mainstream but with much less depth. Particularly, repeatedly seeing Dan Rather’s reporting of the Zapruder film of JFK’s assassination. Rather asserting that “His head went forward with considerable violence” and using his body to show how the President’s body reacted. I was hearing on KPFK early recordings of other eye witnesses that were there when it happened that said just the opposite. I wondered why it wasn’t Cronkite that was given the chance to view and report on it, I thought that was “fishy”. But, repetition is a form of hypnotism and repeatedly seeing Rather tell his eye witness account from a film that at some point everyone would be able to see, I began to accept his account over the others. But then after I watched Zapruder’s film when it was aired in a L.A. T.V. newscast in 1969, well, I never trusted mainstream news again. I remembered Rather from the coverage of the Dem Primary in Chicago in ’68 and his reaction to the police abuse, I thought he was a bit of a sissy. But after I watched the Zapruder film, I knew he lied, and probably did so because he was told to. From then on, he was trash to me. I’ve always wonder how his career would have gone if he had the integrity to tell the truth? I came to believe Operation Mockingbird never ended. I watched T.V. news then for the visuals, not for the reporting. Then I quit watching T.V. all together about ’78. Just read small press periodicals from the “left & right” along with KPFK. Since the ’80s, Pacifica isn’t worth much anymore either. Now there are investigative journalists I search for. Generally I have no loyalty to any outlet or platform. I did get a bit excited about Vice News early on, but just the same ol’ same ol’ PC crap now. I avoid them now because they pissed me off selling out like that. Just individuals I have come to respect, even when I don’t agree with their political slant. But as ever, it’s a game of “Wack-a-Mole” finding places where they are able to publish. It’s good to see some are able to stay in one spot they have more control of now. How long will that last…? smh…
The regular news used to do this sort of thing quite well. When I was young, in the late 60’s, 70’s and into the 80’s the early evening news was local, usually for us a fire in a Philadelphia factory, weather, sports. The six o’clock national news was a mix of national and international, with a lot less political coverage than today. The star national reporters were lefties but they mostly just reported the news.
Bill Clinton turned the presidency into a clown show with the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The news industry seems to have been obsessed with interior scandal rather than international news since then.
My 38 year old international news junkie son has watched news clips from the 80’s on YouTube and asked me if the news really used to be like that. Yes it did. At some point in the past 30 years the news industry moved from reporting facts to creating and polarizing public opinion. Just like in those old dystopian novels…
Interesting to get an inside perspective on Vice from Aris Roussinos. I missed its early years and only discovered the Vice youtube channel after it had entered its progressive later phase. Despite the heavy-handed sermonizing, there are some great videos on Vice youtube. I particularly enjoyed the one that visited “Slab City”, the alternative community in the California desert with no laws.
As Aris noted in his article, the reporters were young and looked like they fitted into the place they were reporting on. There was no sense of superstar reporters grandstanding in front of the cameras.
It’s hard to know how in-depth reporting can flourish in the modern age. The legacy media is now mostly a left-wing echo chamber that relies on clickbait. The Guardian is lucky enough to have an endowment. Even Unherd has a wealthy backer. The future seems to be on Substack and youtube if you can attract enough subscribers. It’s the wild west all over again.
We watched Slab City too, I enjoyed it.
The one where Shane goes to Liberia and meets General Buttf*ck Naked is brilliant. Funny, sad, surprising.
And ‘The VICE guide to North Korea‘ is amazing, a must watch. Incredibly brave doco.
Wow – “The legacy media is now mostly a left-wing echo chamber” – I guess that you haven’t heard of The Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Times, Sun etc – i.e. the great majority of the UK’s ‘print’ or online media, which would be very surprised to hear themselves being described as ‘left wing’ – better warn Rupert Murdoch, Viscouht Rothermere and those Barclays!
He said mostly. Set against the DT you’ve got the BBC, Sky, ITN, Channel 4, LBC, Talk Radio, Capital Radio, The Guardian, The Mirror, The Daily Record, The Independent, The New European, The Herald, The National, The Staggers, even Private Eye.
I said print/digital (meaning not broadcast). It’s a crude measure but looking at the press gazette site, excluding Sundays, free, minor publications, the FT and Scots, ‘right wing’ publications have getting on for 5 times the circulations of ‘left wing’ ones. I can’t quickly find the comparison of the two major ‘free newspaper sites, Daily Mail and Guardian, but I would imagine much the same split.
Because people want to read them. Odd that the world is supposed to be all progressive now, but nobody reads the progressive press.
In other words, the relative size of the left and right wing media in the UK is different depending on whether you measure the volume of people employed & content produced, the number of consumers or paying customers.
Because people want to read them. Odd that the world is supposed to be all progressive now, but nobody reads the progressive press.
In other words, the relative size of the left and right wing media in the UK is different depending on whether you measure the volume of people employed & content produced, the number of consumers or paying customers.
I said print/digital (meaning not broadcast). It’s a crude measure but looking at the press gazette site, excluding Sundays, free, minor publications, the FT and Scots, ‘right wing’ publications have getting on for 5 times the circulations of ‘left wing’ ones. I can’t quickly find the comparison of the two major ‘free newspaper sites, Daily Mail and Guardian, but I would imagine much the same split.
The Times is most definitely not right wing. In fact none of those papers are, they are just vaguely not left wing.
The Daily Mail isn’t left-wing but they are very Liberal.
Don’t be fooled about Murdoch he’s really no different…
He said mostly. Set against the DT you’ve got the BBC, Sky, ITN, Channel 4, LBC, Talk Radio, Capital Radio, The Guardian, The Mirror, The Daily Record, The Independent, The New European, The Herald, The National, The Staggers, even Private Eye.
The Times is most definitely not right wing. In fact none of those papers are, they are just vaguely not left wing.
The Daily Mail isn’t left-wing but they are very Liberal.
Don’t be fooled about Murdoch he’s really no different…
We watched Slab City too, I enjoyed it.
The one where Shane goes to Liberia and meets General Buttf*ck Naked is brilliant. Funny, sad, surprising.
And ‘The VICE guide to North Korea‘ is amazing, a must watch. Incredibly brave doco.
Wow – “The legacy media is now mostly a left-wing echo chamber” – I guess that you haven’t heard of The Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Times, Sun etc – i.e. the great majority of the UK’s ‘print’ or online media, which would be very surprised to hear themselves being described as ‘left wing’ – better warn Rupert Murdoch, Viscouht Rothermere and those Barclays!
Interesting to get an inside perspective on Vice from Aris Roussinos. I missed its early years and only discovered the Vice youtube channel after it had entered its progressive later phase. Despite the heavy-handed sermonizing, there are some great videos on Vice youtube. I particularly enjoyed the one that visited “Slab City”, the alternative community in the California desert with no laws.
As Aris noted in his article, the reporters were young and looked like they fitted into the place they were reporting on. There was no sense of superstar reporters grandstanding in front of the cameras.
It’s hard to know how in-depth reporting can flourish in the modern age. The legacy media is now mostly a left-wing echo chamber that relies on clickbait. The Guardian is lucky enough to have an endowment. Even Unherd has a wealthy backer. The future seems to be on Substack and youtube if you can attract enough subscribers. It’s the wild west all over again.
The ironic thing is that modern media outlets have huge amounts of data, analytics and insight into their readers needs, wants and interests. And yet despite all that information they slowly make worse and worse decisions and the bubble bursts, or readers/viewers leave. Why does the media go awry when it has so much audience data that should keep it on track?
As with opinion polls, audience data tells you want to hear.
Movie networks do the same thing, they crunch all the numbers to figure out how to profit from what people like based on these types of analytics. But we’re humans, not robots, and that only goes so far.
We want stories with heart, and a reporter given the freedom to document whatever he feels will capture an audience, is going to have that innate appeal. The same reporter writing an article on a subject pulled from a list of “hot topics” derived from some data model will never have.
“Why does the media go awry when it has so much audience data that should keep it on track?”
In my opinion, because they are propagandists, not investigative journalists.
Lack of integrity, we, those of us that seek them out for the news are the product, not the client.
As with opinion polls, audience data tells you want to hear.
Movie networks do the same thing, they crunch all the numbers to figure out how to profit from what people like based on these types of analytics. But we’re humans, not robots, and that only goes so far.
We want stories with heart, and a reporter given the freedom to document whatever he feels will capture an audience, is going to have that innate appeal. The same reporter writing an article on a subject pulled from a list of “hot topics” derived from some data model will never have.
“Why does the media go awry when it has so much audience data that should keep it on track?”
In my opinion, because they are propagandists, not investigative journalists.
Lack of integrity, we, those of us that seek them out for the news are the product, not the client.
The ironic thing is that modern media outlets have huge amounts of data, analytics and insight into their readers needs, wants and interests. And yet despite all that information they slowly make worse and worse decisions and the bubble bursts, or readers/viewers leave. Why does the media go awry when it has so much audience data that should keep it on track?
Self-described dashing young war correspondent doesn’t quite explain his part in bringing down mighty Vice. Sounds like it simply ran its course and readers moved on to different outlets.
Oh, and here in America, the media is despised for the propaganda shills they are. Their idea of a war zone is an Elks Club picnic in the Midwest.
In fairness to the author, article titles are written by Unherd staff. Perhaps the Unherd editor was channeling the war memoirs of the great Spike Milligan (“Hitler: My Part in His Downfall!”).
I think Aris does tell us how he contributed to Vice’s downfall. He was part of the early, expensive effort to provide in-depth war journalism. That was high quality journalism but not many viewers were interested and so Vice bled money.
In fairness to the author, article titles are written by Unherd staff. Perhaps the Unherd editor was channeling the war memoirs of the great Spike Milligan (“Hitler: My Part in His Downfall!”).
I think Aris does tell us how he contributed to Vice’s downfall. He was part of the early, expensive effort to provide in-depth war journalism. That was high quality journalism but not many viewers were interested and so Vice bled money.
Self-described dashing young war correspondent doesn’t quite explain his part in bringing down mighty Vice. Sounds like it simply ran its course and readers moved on to different outlets.
Oh, and here in America, the media is despised for the propaganda shills they are. Their idea of a war zone is an Elks Club picnic in the Midwest.
I’ll say what Roussinos won’t say out of humility. Vice News was the last gasp of in-depth, on location, TV reporting. What’s left? Anchors standing on their balconies reporting the Ukraine War from Kyiv? Sure, the BBC sends some teams to the front (because they can afford to as someone pointed out below). These reports are few and far between. There are never enough curious and educated consumers for in-depth news. We only get in-depth reporting when we agree, as a society, to fund what can’t make enough money to cover expenses for a wide variety of reasons. Oh the irony when Musk flagged NPR as a government funded news outlet. If ONLY NPR got that kind of reliable money for in-depth reporting!Wherever I can I say we’re in world war III. Some sort of war in Asia is coming as night follows day, to anyone who follows it (and few do). Same for Africa and, once again, the Middle East. We need something like Vice News more than ever. It seems there are some lessons that a generation must feel first hand, in dead bodies, before it realizes the cost of NOT paying journalists like scientists, to research with no guarantees of success.
NPR is one of the most reliable echo chambers of the left.
When a “news” outlet is just a propagandist for middle of the road neo-liberalism, corporatism, neo-feudalism,… “the left”? That label has become meaningless now I suppose.
When a “news” outlet is just a propagandist for middle of the road neo-liberalism, corporatism, neo-feudalism,… “the left”? That label has become meaningless now I suppose.
NPR is one of the most reliable echo chambers of the left.
I’ll say what Roussinos won’t say out of humility. Vice News was the last gasp of in-depth, on location, TV reporting. What’s left? Anchors standing on their balconies reporting the Ukraine War from Kyiv? Sure, the BBC sends some teams to the front (because they can afford to as someone pointed out below). These reports are few and far between. There are never enough curious and educated consumers for in-depth news. We only get in-depth reporting when we agree, as a society, to fund what can’t make enough money to cover expenses for a wide variety of reasons. Oh the irony when Musk flagged NPR as a government funded news outlet. If ONLY NPR got that kind of reliable money for in-depth reporting!Wherever I can I say we’re in world war III. Some sort of war in Asia is coming as night follows day, to anyone who follows it (and few do). Same for Africa and, once again, the Middle East. We need something like Vice News more than ever. It seems there are some lessons that a generation must feel first hand, in dead bodies, before it realizes the cost of NOT paying journalists like scientists, to research with no guarantees of success.
Vice’s collapse can be summarised far more succintly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia7fUQXskvA
Haha! The manbun and the soy.
luv it lol
Haha! The manbun and the soy.
luv it lol
Vice’s collapse can be summarised far more succintly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia7fUQXskvA
Aris is correct about 2016. Before then people wanted to have facts on which to base their views, facts that they suspected were hidden from them by less intrepid news outlets. Now people don’t want facts, in case those facts conflict or add nuance to the views they want to hold.
Aris is correct about 2016. Before then people wanted to have facts on which to base their views, facts that they suspected were hidden from them by less intrepid news outlets. Now people don’t want facts, in case those facts conflict or add nuance to the views they want to hold.
Did something similar happen to Buzzfeed ? They surfaced a few weeks ago (they had slipped off my radar years ago) and the articles were all spruiking a series of very unfunny, attempted satire pieces on JK Rowling from ‘The Onion’, that were so try-hard & painful that you felt sorry for whoever was made to write them.
I wondered then if Buzzfeed had been co-opted by someone and how long it would last. Sure enough, a week ago, they announced the shutdown of their news division. Will The Onion be next?
As I understand it Buzzfeed’s most popular and high-profile content creators all left during the late 2010s and what remained wasn’t sustainable, because the audience were following those people, not the channel itself.
As I understand it Buzzfeed’s most popular and high-profile content creators all left during the late 2010s and what remained wasn’t sustainable, because the audience were following those people, not the channel itself.
Did something similar happen to Buzzfeed ? They surfaced a few weeks ago (they had slipped off my radar years ago) and the articles were all spruiking a series of very unfunny, attempted satire pieces on JK Rowling from ‘The Onion’, that were so try-hard & painful that you felt sorry for whoever was made to write them.
I wondered then if Buzzfeed had been co-opted by someone and how long it would last. Sure enough, a week ago, they announced the shutdown of their news division. Will The Onion be next?
The world did not change you. It’s just that you finally noticed the world.
I reverse the old ’60s narcissism: I don’t read much of anyone under 35.
I was lucky to go to a supremely good American liberal arts college. I always loved what the Dean of Admissions used to say: he didn’t want teacher recommendations of students seeking admission. He said that at that age they hadn’t yet been tested, and until you;’re tested, what’s there to say about you?
The author of this piece is, unconsciously, admitting why it is great news that Vice (and Buzzfeed, they say) will close. Must of what passes for journalism today is just liberal bromides designed to show how morally superior and wise is the author.
That’s rarely true. Long live the King! Down with Vice Media.
The world did not change you. It’s just that you finally noticed the world.
I reverse the old ’60s narcissism: I don’t read much of anyone under 35.
I was lucky to go to a supremely good American liberal arts college. I always loved what the Dean of Admissions used to say: he didn’t want teacher recommendations of students seeking admission. He said that at that age they hadn’t yet been tested, and until you;’re tested, what’s there to say about you?
The author of this piece is, unconsciously, admitting why it is great news that Vice (and Buzzfeed, they say) will close. Must of what passes for journalism today is just liberal bromides designed to show how morally superior and wise is the author.
That’s rarely true. Long live the King! Down with Vice Media.
Never heard of them to mourn their passing and I’m not that much of a hayseed.
Much the same for me, insofar as I’d heard of them but their output somehow never crossed my radar. The tone of the whole article struck me as slightly ‘off’ somehow, from Roussinos’s humblebrag reference to “my only Emmy”, to describing himself as ‘green’, aged 31 and with several war reporting gigs under his belt.
Much the same for me, insofar as I’d heard of them but their output somehow never crossed my radar. The tone of the whole article struck me as slightly ‘off’ somehow, from Roussinos’s humblebrag reference to “my only Emmy”, to describing himself as ‘green’, aged 31 and with several war reporting gigs under his belt.
Never heard of them to mourn their passing and I’m not that much of a hayseed.
This video is not about violence in a foreign country. It’s about violence in London. It’s difficult to think of another news outlet in the UK that would have produced this video.
(1) London’s Knife Crime Emergency: ON A KNIFE EDGE – YouTube
That was a hard watch. Very moving and unsettling. Thanks for the link.
That was a hard watch. Very moving and unsettling. Thanks for the link.
This video is not about violence in a foreign country. It’s about violence in London. It’s difficult to think of another news outlet in the UK that would have produced this video.
(1) London’s Knife Crime Emergency: ON A KNIFE EDGE – YouTube
Without going so far as to say there was a causal link, Vice – or at least the Vice I’d known since c.2001, when they started appearing in small piles in the corner of the coolest clothes shops and pubs – peaked and then morphed into a different beast around the time McInnes left and Dash Snow died, so 2008/09 – a global financial crisis, Obama replaced Bush, Cameron replaced Blair, Ryan McGinley and Terry Richardson defined their respective niches, The Old Blue Last was rocking, Vice Records were putting out records by Black Lips, Justice, Fucked Up & The Raveonettes, I even had Andy Capper’s number…if you were 22 and rejected the prevailing mainstream Lad culture, seeking a slightly nihilistic, admittedly poserish escape, Vice had you covered. In a comfy American Apparel zip-up hoody.
Then the idiots came.
Without going so far as to say there was a causal link, Vice – or at least the Vice I’d known since c.2001, when they started appearing in small piles in the corner of the coolest clothes shops and pubs – peaked and then morphed into a different beast around the time McInnes left and Dash Snow died, so 2008/09 – a global financial crisis, Obama replaced Bush, Cameron replaced Blair, Ryan McGinley and Terry Richardson defined their respective niches, The Old Blue Last was rocking, Vice Records were putting out records by Black Lips, Justice, Fucked Up & The Raveonettes, I even had Andy Capper’s number…if you were 22 and rejected the prevailing mainstream Lad culture, seeking a slightly nihilistic, admittedly poserish escape, Vice had you covered. In a comfy American Apparel zip-up hoody.
Then the idiots came.
I never trusted Vice News or Buzzfeed.
I never trusted Vice News or Buzzfeed.
Sounds about right but in such a brief window in the arch of history that who cares? Plus reporters take risks for reasons that soldiers & innocent bystanders do not have the luxury to avoid. Never forget that part of your story…