Questioning “The Media”

What is media?

In 2024, for better or worse, there are thousands of sources to get information available at our fingertips at any hour of the day. For many years, numerous sources of information (and disinformation) have created confusion for the average consumer, who must engage in a quest to determine what is true and what is not. We’ve all heard the term “fake news,” but the problem goes so much deeper than that. Unless you stay on top of the trends all day, it’s easy to be confused. This has dire consequences at every level—from politics to the food on our dinner table.

I started this Substack as an easy resource for evaluating and questioning our media sources and where we get our information. For each post, I will provide a key takeaway to build on for future posts. To write a Susbstack about media, I thought I better define what I mean first.

That leads me to today’s takeaway. Media is a tool—plural for medium. It is simply a way to communicate with people. This simple definition is critical to understanding media literacy.

For the sake of this Substack, media means a specific type of tool rather than the content, and there are so many different types that we will define later. When we refer to media, we must be clear that we are speaking very broadly about tools and not a combined entity. Lumping all “media” into the same category is dangerous. We must know what makes each element different to evaluate the media we consume. We need to evaluate the tool from the user of the tool and the structure of the tool.  The media is not a combined entity. To evaluate media, we must investigate it a bit further. I want to give people the tools to question the media and think critically.

I am not going to tell the reader what to believe and what to think. This Substack is not partisan. I will offer skills for making better decisions as media consumers. If you want to learn more about how to become a media consumer, this Substack is for you.

When I started my career over twenty years ago, the entire landscape was completely different, and much of the media today did not exist. It was before the creation of many media forms that we see today.

I will talk about the current trends in the media and what we can expect in the future. I will define key terms to help you better understand what you are consuming—like non-profit media, corporate media, traditional media, paid media, earned media, owned media, shared media, opinion media, independent media, content development, propaganda, public interest public relations, public relations, journalism, opinion, editorial, dark money media. There’s so much more. I will teach you how to watch for words that indicate something is a scam or a source of disinformation or conspiracy theories. We’ll touch on the media business, how layoffs create a void, and who and what is filling that gap, creating a disinformation network.

Who am I, and why should you believe me? I am a public interest public relations and earned media consultant with 20 years of experience—specializing in media literacy, media ethics, and journalism rights, among many other topics. If you have no idea what that means, you came to the right place. Over time, I will explain all those terms. I am writing this Substack to explain what it all means to help people become better media consumers. This information can help you determine if you believe what I am saying, but feel free to ask me questions before assuming what those terms mean. We are big fans of asking questions on this Substack.

For those who follow me here because they know me and my work, I will provide tips for those in my field about what we can do to prevent disinformation from spreading.

Last, Substack is new for me, and I am still learning! I welcome feedback and thoughts along the way—both on my content and my direction. If I make a mistake, let me know.

We’re all here to learn and become better consumers of information!