Let us begin, if you will, by acknowledging the basic premise with the full disdain it deserves: that CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC still believe themselves to be the primary conduits of information for the thinking public. This belief is cherished in dimly lit boardrooms and echoing studios where coiffed anchors peddle their polished outrage to an audience whose average age is now uncomfortably close to that of the American Republic itself.
But the youth—those ever-maligned, easily dismissed, and yet chronically underestimated cohorts of the internet age—have turned away. And quite rightly so.
What, after all, do the traditional cable networks offer them? A revolving carousel of octogenarian pundits clucking over the latest manufactured scandal? Panels comprised of former political operatives, now rebranded as “analysts,” whose sole utility is to provide the illusion of balance while selling their souls to the highest bidder? These are not forums of debate but theatrical autopsies performed on the corpse of journalism, presided over by those who helped kill it.
Younger generations, possessing both the cynicism of the disenchanted and the tools of technological escape, have recognized a most uncomfortable truth: that the so-called “mainstream” media—whether draped in red, blue, or the pretend neutrality of grey—no longer reports the news. It curates narratives. It packages perspectives. It sells sentiment.
And perhaps worst of all, it grovels before power while pretending to challenge it.
The networks, each in their tribal war paint, have become caricatures of themselves. Fox News rails against “the left” with the fire of a televangelist selling salvation to the fearful. MSNBC counters with performative concern and carefully measured doses of virtue. CNN splits the difference with a droning centrism that confuses tepid equivalency with objectivity. And across them all, the same tired formula: outrage, spectacle, ad breaks, repeat.
Younger people, armed with Reddit threads, YouTube long-form exposés, TikTok explainer rants, and yes, even the occasionally lucid podcast, have forged their own channels of comprehension. These may be messy, contradictory, and unfiltered—but at least they have not been bleached of authenticity by corporate sanitizers and advertiser vetoes.
It is not that the young are apathetic. Far from it. They are skeptical—and in an age when every institution appears corruptible and compromised, skepticism is the only moral position left. They see the game: the rotating door between media and government, the choreographed confrontations, the studied silence on issues that would ruffle a donor’s feathers. They see through the false antagonism of Left and Right, which evaporates the moment a war must be sold, a bank bailed out, or a surveillance bill passed.
And here, perhaps, lies the most damning indictment of traditional media: its utter failure to provide actual opposition to power. The Fourth Estate has become a comfortable adjunct of the state itself. Journalists, once adversaries of emperors and clerics, now sip cocktails with the same Beltway ghouls they pretend to scrutinize. They have traded their pens for press passes, their integrity for access.
So the youth have done what any reasonable human would do when confronted with a table of poisoned fruit: they’ve walked away. They turn to independent creators, decentralized platforms, and to each other—not because these are flawless, but because they are less compromised. Because they might still tell the truth accidentally, instead of lying professionally.
Let the old guard sneer. Let them dismiss the new frontier of digital discourse as chaotic, unserious, even dangerous. Better danger than decay. Better a flood of voices than the monotonous dirge of institutional rot. Better, in short, a wild, unregulated agora than a stage-managed funeral procession for the truth.
The television may still flicker in hotel lobbies and airport lounges. It may still echo in the homes of those who fear the world they no longer understand. But for the generations inheriting that world, its time is up. The transmission has ended. The anchors still speak—but no one is watching.