Clickwhoring explained

A short survey of the English media this morning will give you an utterly shocking picture of the degree of not only bias, but utter, shameless propaganda that, by now, pervades the free press of a still democratic country.

Let me assure you that this is not due to government coercion. The UK is no Ukraine, and it still has opposition parties and media free to publish what they want. One needs, therefore, to look for the reasons for this utter degradation elsewhere.

I think that the explanation can be given with only one word:

Clickwhoring.

Once upon a time, the information sources were limited and their income largely assured. An army of subscribers and an even bigger army of affectionate readers ensured that the media outlets could ensure a degree of professionalism without jeopardising their operations. Again, the readers’ options were numbered, and if you abandoned the Daily Telegraph, or the Daily Mirror, there was really no suitable alternative to that particular “brand”.

It is all radically different now. Not only does every reader know a number of alternative sources; he knows that he can find half a dozen more with just a little research.

Then there is the cancer of our time, social media. A vast percentage of news articles are now read by clicking the links posted on Facebook and Twitter. This means that unless you are vastly represented, and the links to your articles are constantly posted, there, you are going exactly nowhere.

This is how clickwhoring is born. When something is in everybody’s mind (say: Ukraine) going against the prevalent narrative will be click suicide for every big outlet. Every reader of, say, publication XYZ will immediately ditch them in disgust and accurately avoid every link to their videos and articles if he gets angered by simple things like, say, the truth.

We see this with the Special Military Operation in the Ukraine very clearly. The mention of simple facts of life, like:

Russia will win this war, because they will do whatever it takes to win it.

Ukraine has suffered heavy losses .

Ukraine has been bombing the Donbas on and off for 8 years, killing 14,000 civilians.

Ukraine is heavily influenced by NeoNazi groups both in the government and in the army.

Russia has achieved air superiority on day one .

The Ukrainian Donbas army is encircled, cut off from fuel and ammo deliveries, and being shot at

Mariopol has been taken by the Russians ten days ago

The poor devils (or poor bastards) in the Azovstal factory have 0 chance of winning. …

will cause the emotionally very involved, often woke Twitter and Facebook readers to immediately cancel and boycott the entire outlet. This, in turn, will cause the number of links posted on Twitter and Facebook to go down drastically. The clicks will collapse and, with them, the revenues.

No traditional media outlet, with his army of journalists, administrators, support staff, HR, perhaps even equality scroungers, and expensive rents to pay can afford that. Their business model will force them to beg for clicks every morning, actually every moment.

The quality information now resides elsewhere, in the army of competent observers, sitting in their own living room with a camera and a laptop, knowing full well that quality will always be enough to make them thrive, because the atomisation of the media market makes the attainment of the micro niche they want all but assured, given constant quality and sufficient patience.

This perfectly explains the phenomenon of, say, military “experts” on CNN – carefully chosen among those looking for government contracts and cable channels money – assuring us how badly Russia is doing, and military observers without interest in licking big media’s boots (like Ridley, or Macgregor) actually telling us how things really are, from their own living room, with the cat walking around.

This is where we are. I think it will only end when enough people understand that social media are not helping them to know facts, but to create for them the bubble they desire.

Clickwhoring is the symptom.

Twitter and Facebook are the real disease.