Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

By focusing on outrage, the media risks alienating younger audiences

Young man looking angry at display of his smartphone.

The inflammatory rhetoric, meaningless speculation and lack of fact checking by the media may result in young adults rejecting traditional platforms in favor of their well-being.

urbazon/Getty Images

Rikleen is executive director of Lawyers Defending American Democracy and the editor of “Her Honor – Stories of Challenge and Triumph from Women Judges.” Beougher is a junior at Amherst College and a co-founder ofStudents Strengthening American Democracy.

As attacks on democracy and the rule of law continually increase, much of the media refuses to address its role in intensifying the peril.

Instead of asking hard questions and insisting on answers, traditional media outlets increasingly trade news and facts for speculative commentary that ignores a story’s contextual significance. At the same time, social media outlets and influencers stoke anger as an alternative to thoughtfulness.


Examples abound every day. The New York Times just posed 21 detailed policy questions that Vice President Kamala Harris should answer, without offering a similar set of questions for former President Donald Trump. Most traditional and social media outlets have ignored detailed investigative reporting into whether, days before the 2016 election, the president of Egypt gave Trump an illegal $10 million donation. That failure of reporting has also allowed Trump’s last attorney general, William Barr, to evade scrutiny about whether he prematurely shut down the government’s investigation into the gift.

This is not simply about candidates being treated differently. It reveals an abrogation of responsibility with grave implications, particularly for younger generations seeking trusted sources of information and exploring how to marshal arguments based on facts. Instead, they are bombarded by media outlets that sacrifice accuracy, analysis and truth for speculation, anger and disinformation, resulting in a pervasive distrust of the media.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

By using algorithms that consistently select content that evokes anger and outrage, engagement is maximized, and media sources profit from the attention. Information that enlightens and informs takes a back seat to hyped emotions that increase viewership and interaction, leading to greater profits. The result is an upside-down world of incentives that promote less factual reporting and more rampant speculation that drives emotions and deepens the divisions in this country.

But the incentives may prove to offer only short-term benefits. Traditional and social media outlets that seek a younger demographic to grow their future revenues may find themselves thwarted by a generation taking measures to protect their own mental health. The incessant inflammatory rhetoric, meaningless speculation and failures to fact check may be resulting in young adults rejecting these platforms in favor of their well-being.

Moreover, the greatest hazard resulting from a disinformation environment where the incentives lead to increased toxicity and a less-informed electorate is alienation, driving young and future voters away from the polls.

Historically, when an intervention was warranted to curb societal dangers, we could look to legislative solutions to shape some form of relief. The toxic nature of our public square itself, however, has contributed to the paralysis of Congress. And Supreme Court decisions under Chief Justice John Roberts have repeatedly prevented the government from protecting the public from speech that spreads lies or that can lead to serious harm to targeted groups.

If neither Congress, the Supreme Court nor the media can be counted on to deliver interventions, it may be up to each of us to try to alter the algorithms that promote anger and division.

The first step is to recognize that every click on a video, news article or post that is spreading inflammatory and potentially false information teaches that algorithm that you will respond to similar stimuli. Fortunately, we are already seeing signs that members of Gen Z are trying to retrain algorithms and regain power over their own feeds.

It is important to offer media outlets different incentives — ones that will focus on facts and reject outrage. We do so when we seek information sources that care about truth, accountability and well-being. This task involves ingenuity and energy but the reward is finding truthful information that can be shared widely. For example, before clicking on a story that appears designed to induce anger and disinformation, test its veracity through sources such as FactCheck.org.

Become an explorer who finds new sources and resources. Consider the work of the National Institute for Civil Discourse, which has launched the Media Roundtable to help shift incentive structures away from rewarding the exploitation of differences. Younger activists are channeling their own anger into mobilizing and sharing facts and information on causes of deep concern.

Universities are becoming increasingly involved in the important work of teaching media literacy, particularly in the engagement of young people. Projects such as the Media Education Lab and Teach for Chicago Journalism offer resources and approaches to building savvier media consumers.

Demanding truth, refusing clickbait, and turning away from disinformation and speculation sends a strong message to traditional and social media sources and advertisers that it is time to listen to those seeking responsible information. Media outlets that thrive on rage, prognostication, speculation and division must be thwarted by alternatives that speak truth to power.

For democracy and the rule of law to survive and flourish, anger and disinformation cannot be business as usual. Media outlets that focus on facts and truth build trust with future consumers, particularly the younger generations on whom their survival ultimately depends.

Read More

Should States Regulate AI?

Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-CA, speaks at an AI conference on Capitol Hill with experts

Provided

Should States Regulate AI?

WASHINGTON —- As House Republicans voted Thursday to pass a 10-year moratorium on AI regulation by states, Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-CA, and AI experts said the measure would be necessary to ensure US dominance in the industry.

“We want to make sure that AI continues to be led by the United States of America, and we want to make sure that our economy and our society realizes the potential benefits of AI deployment,” Obernolte said.

Keep ReadingShow less
The AI Race We Need: For a Better Future, Not Against Another Nation

The concept of AI hovering among the public.

Getty Images, J Studios

The AI Race We Need: For a Better Future, Not Against Another Nation

The AI race that warrants the lion’s share of our attention and resources is not the one with China. Both superpowers should stop hurriedly pursuing AI advances for the sake of “beating” the other. We’ve seen such a race before. Both participants lose. The real race is against an unacceptable status quo: declining lifespans, increasing income inequality, intensifying climate chaos, and destabilizing politics. That status quo will drag on, absent the sorts of drastic improvements AI can bring about. AI may not solve those problems but it may accelerate our ability to improve collective well-being. That’s a race worth winning.

Geopolitical races have long sapped the U.S. of realizing a better future sooner. The U.S. squandered scarce resources and diverted talented staff to close the alleged missile gap with the USSR. President Dwight D. Eisenhower rightfully noted, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” He realized that every race comes at an immense cost. In this case, the country was “spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Closeup of Software engineering team engaged in problem-solving and code analysis

Closeup of Software engineering team engaged in problem-solving and code analysis.

Getty Images, MTStock Studio

AI Is Here. Our Laws Are Stuck in the Past.

Artificial intelligence (AI) promises a future once confined to science fiction: personalized medicine accounting for your specific condition, accelerated scientific discovery addressing the most difficult challenges, and reimagined public education designed around AI tutors suited to each student's learning style. We see glimpses of this potential on a daily basis. Yet, as AI capabilities surge forward at exponential speed, the laws and regulations meant to guide them remain anchored in the twentieth century (if not the nineteenth or eighteenth!). This isn't just inefficient; it's dangerously reckless.

For too long, our approach to governing new technologies, including AI, has been one of cautious incrementalism—trying to fit revolutionary tools into outdated frameworks. We debate how century-old privacy torts apply to vast AI training datasets, how liability rules designed for factory machines might cover autonomous systems, or how copyright law conceived for human authors handles AI-generated creations. We tinker around the edges, applying digital patches to analog laws.

Keep ReadingShow less
Nurturing the Next Generation of Journalists
man using MacBook Air

Nurturing the Next Generation of Journalists

“Student journalists are uniquely positioned to take on the challenges of complicating the narrative about how we see each other, putting forward new solutions to how we can work together and have dialogue across difference,” said Maxine Rich, the Program Manager with Common Ground USA. I had the chance to interview her earlier this year about Common Ground Journalism, a new initiative to support students reporting in contentious times.

A partnership with The Fulcrum and the Latino News Network (LNN), I joined Maxine and Nicole Donelan, Program Assistant with Common Ground USA, as co-instructor of the first Common Ground Journalism cohort, which ran for six weeks between January and March 2025.

Keep ReadingShow less