The World Beneath the World
Roughly four years ago, I bought my first house. It sat on two acres in the woods, a beautiful cedar home surrounded by gardens. Like most homeowners, I initially saw it as a complete entity - a house, a home, a sanctuary. But ownership has a way of peeling back layers of perception.
The previous owner built it himself, working from an architect's plans. What I didn't understand then was how sparse architectural drawings can be. They outline the broad strokes, but countless decisions happen on the ground. As I began maintaining and modifying the house, I discovered the consequences of those decisions: ceilings that were too short, plumbing configurations that made renovations nearly impossible, and an HVAC system that couldn't be replaced without major surgery to the house.
That house wasn't quite the house I thought I bought. The magic of seeing it as a perfect whole gave way to understanding its individual components - some brilliant, others puzzling. This deeper understanding changed my relationship with the house. It became more real, more mine, precisely because I saw its flaws and complexities.
I build software systems for a living. My days revolve around understanding how things work, how they break, and how they can be improved. I analyze technological and organizational systems, looking at their components and incentives. But outside of work, I rarely apply this same analytical lens to the systems that shape my daily life.
This selective blindness is practical. Operating in society requires a baseline trust in certain systems. Questioning every process, verifying every individual, and investigating every system would paralyze daily life. But there's a balance between blind trust and targeted investigation. The key is understanding where to look deeper - particularly in systems that significantly impact your life.
The media ecosystem offers a compelling example of why this matters. Traditional media faces an existential threat from the internet's alternative news sources. Whether these alternatives are more or less accurate isn't the point - what matters is the undeniable shift in economics. Mainstream media audiences are shrinking while individual voices on tech platforms grow louder.
This creates misaligned incentives. As traditional media fights for survival, it increasingly adopts the tactics of its digital competitors. The goal shifts from informing to attracting attention at any cost. A YouTube creator openly aims for views and clicks - that's the business model. But when traditional news organizations compete purely for clicks, they compromise their fundamental purpose.
This transformation happened gradually, story by story, leading up to the first Trump presidency. It wasn't necessarily malicious - just the natural result of changing economics and increasing media consolidation. The industry consolidated precisely because it was shrinking while still being viewed as a means to shape public opinion.
My perspective on this shifted during the 2016 election. For years, I dismissed Fox News viewers, seeing clips on other networks that showed Fox's misleading coverage. When I watched Fox directly, I confirmed these biases. A deeper analysis of other news sources revealed the same manipulation happened on the left. Both sides play the same game.
Today's mainstream news excels at finding inflammatory soundbites - extreme enough to upset people, but not so extreme that they seem implausible. They find specific instances and present them as universal truths. The goal isn't to inform but to generate outrage while maintaining just enough credibility to keep viewers coming back.
This approach makes economic sense in today's media landscape. When news becomes a commodity, with everyone reporting the same facts, differentiation becomes difficult. So networks seek unique angles, sometimes at the cost of accuracy. Quiet retractions follow false stories, but the damage is done.
The fundamental problem is that news has become entertainment. It used to be that licensed broadcasters aimed to report truth. Cable news began eroding this standard, and once some outlets adopted sensationalist tactics, others followed to remain competitive.
The solution isn't obvious, but it begins with recognizing that news shouldn't be entertainment. The path forward might involve treating news as a verified commodity, or democratizing it through citizen journalism with robust fact-checking tools. While true objectivity might be impossible - meaning varies between viewers based on their background and values - establishing objective facts while allowing different interpretations of those facts remains essential.
As information becomes more accessible, the gap between reasonable people's conclusions should narrow, not widen. Yet current systems gate-keep information, trying to control narratives rather than maximize understanding. Most concerning is how government sources can manufacture truth by leaking information to news organizations and then citing those articles as evidence for their claims.
Looking beneath the surface of our media system reveals uncomfortable truths. Like that house in the woods, the reality is more complex than the surface suggests. Understanding these complexities matters deeply for making informed decisions about what information to consume and trust. The path forward lies in examining these systems critically, recognizing their flaws, and actively choosing information sources that prioritize truth over engagement.