WAS: What Adults are Saying about Gatekeepers

Bemoaning the gatekeeper function creates chaos and more dullards

Citizens long-served by legacy media structures are often curious why so many venturing into new media styles decry information gatekeepers. The idea of an editor, across any mass medium, for decades, was considered a key part of keeping all informed. On behalf of their paper, station, channel or even studio (cinema was the first “electronic” mass medium) editors at different heights on the totem pole told the story of “news”.

American’s strong embrace of the 1st Amendment meant standards in editing were institutional and normative—not legal. They were broadly agreed to informally, widely followed and always getting nicked when interlopers like William Randolph Hearst or later Rupert Murdoch and his family of scoundrels decided the social utility of mass news should ALWAYS be overrun by profit grabbing. Of course, that strain was always there, but even deep into the cable era—about the 1990s or so—the business and editorial sides of the house largely tolerated one another without interference. Of course in 1977 Paddy Chayevsky in his masterpiece screen play for Network showed us how information flow could rapidly be altered for bad actions and then easily snuffed when interests were no longer served. When the flow of daily “newsworthy” information becomes solely guided by a commercial interest so to comes the time when the American idiot counter works overtime because dialogue is reduced to National Enquirer levels.

That a model without the gatekeeper is somehow preferred is baffling. Gatekeepers abound in life in all circles, some arguably (such as law enforcement), with heavy influence while granted a critical social imperative. Something as innocuous as a street speed-bump or a numbered ordering slip at your local deli are two of dozens of ways they appear. They too carry a social (though lower, imperative).

The nay-sayers with this approach always start with the identical, sophmoric query as in “who are you to determine what gets published?” The answer is always the same; “I am the god-damned gatekeeper!” But more importantly the question ignores the fact that said gatekeeper, despite responsive hubris, may be an advanced graduate of an esteemed journalism or government school. It may the gatekeeper is a deeply experienced professional in the area her platform covers. It may be the gatekeeper is such a non-compromised insider to his area of expertise that news sources exclusively share information with him. It may be the gatekeeper is such an expert of the written narrative, or of audio production, or of video production, or a master of integrating charts and tables into a story that the mantle earned as gatekeeper has simply come as a result of sustained professional excellence! The anti-gatekeeper crowd, when faced with such evidence want all to believe that any opinions offered in today’s splintered media terrain, are of equal importance. As stated before there is a common phrase for those like this—”precious child.”

What’s even worse as the media industry (Main Stream and other strands) collapse, far too many of the legitimate gatekeepers who through skill or information utility have earned their stripes, simply give it away. What can become a daily exercise in head-shaking astonishment with platforms like Substack and others, features contributors who offer stunningly good content and then proceed to bandy it about in a social-media like fashion.

The first lesson of the tribes in the longhouse is he who has the talking stick, talks. Why would content producing contemporaries give that away? Today on virtually any platform where its seen by more than 100 people, a decent narrative story is lauded, held tightly to the bosom and savored. It’s both beautiful and informative. It’s a place, even on a micro basis, where form meets function. So why then do so many of its authors follow that posting with snarkiness or faux-hip patter which are both excessively juvenile? Why in the name of anything literate would someone want to write something good, maybe even credible, and then immediately go out of their way to illustrate they can play just as dumb as all the other dullards who follow? It’s a maddening feature of all social media. To be dumb is good? To be sharp or pointed is threatening? How did such perverse norms come to pass on any platform?