The International Institute for Middle-East and Balkan Studies (IFIMES)[1], based in Ljubljana, Slovenia, is renowned for its regular analysis of global developments, particularly focusing on the Middle-East, the Balkans, and other significant regions worldwide. A notable contribution comes from Steve Clemons, who is the Editor at Large of The National Interest. Clemons's article, “Fragmentation of Media Reality,”[2] offers some perspective on the fragmentation of media.
There is a hubris and inappropriate self-confidence among mainstream media that their practices and approaches to media are sound, and new entrants are unsound. They purport to present fact-checked truths while pointing to new media as promulgators of disinformation, poor journalism, AI-assisted deep fakes, and propaganda. My ‘provocation’ for those of you today attending the OSCE’s conference on the state of journalism and media broadly is that progress in assuring a healthy, socially responsible media consistent with democratic norms cannot come from just clinging to past platforms and norms.
Let me offer some perspective on the fragmentation of media and what it means for society.
First, the fragmentation of media has been a multi-decade phenomenon, driven not only by new digital tools and platforms but, particularly in the United States, by changes in law that previously guaranteed “fair use” of airwaves so that anything that gave air to one political party’s perspective required fair time for the other political party. The Supreme Court and U.S. legislators gutted those provisions of fair use requirements long ago, and thus the harnessing of TV, Cable and Radio airwaves, and later blogs, and even leading newspapers and journals by political perspectives took hold. This has helped fuel the tribalization of perspectives and has driven the “filter bubble” phenomenon of individuals being surrounded and inundated by views that they want to have around them, rather than the generally objective, occasionally uncomfortable form of news that used to inform the body politic. Similar patterns seem clear in the rise of populist news platforms, blogs, and social media networks in Europe.
Second, the eruption of social media networks, video, and digital tools enhanced not only by artificial intelligence that has been around for some time, but by generative AI, that has created a strategic leap in the power content creators has changed the power relationship between news providers and news consumers. Now many more players, many untutored in the skills and norms of journalism, have become content providers, and that content often seems like or mimics news. I started a successful political blog, The Washington Note, in early 2004, and my target was the mainstream news media as I saw them largely as homogenized, lazy, often missing key stories — and thus my blog at the outset was designed to shame and blame major news media for their own inadequacies and to provide better news and service to my own readers. Many blogs did this, and thus 20 years ago, the fragmentation of media, in my view, helped improve mainstream media which had to compete and re-establish itself as providers of quality news — a responsibility for which they had been lazy and inattentive.
However today, the challenges to mainstream media are messier as the challengers do not necessarily fill the gaps left by a poorly performing mainstream media — they instead often create fake or ‘unreal’ media, deep fakes, memes, or engage in outright propaganda or perpetuate mistruths. Not all new media do this, but there is no doubt that lots of new media are up for sale, up for political harnessing, up for attention and celebritization of their platforms and content.
So what to do? I feel that too many governments, think tanks, and public private foundations concerned with news quality have been clutching their pearls too much, lamenting the eroding quality of journalism and news rather than competing head-to-head with new content providers and low-quality new media outlets. It seems clear to me that for media to return to a healthier place and to become part of the solid social contract in democratic societies, they need to evolve.
My belief is that the deep fake creations of some media are worrisome but only have impact on vulnerable societies if there is no competition with them. How are old media investing in new tools of story-telling? How are they embracing a less centralized approach to who their story tellers might be? How could they be promulgating and inculcating a younger generation of content makers with norms about sourcing, about real facts, about objectivity, about the importance of uncomfortable news and not just opinion-reaffirming news or perspectives? How are they experimenting with all of the new waves of technology coming online to make themselves the more attractive news and content option — thus stealing space and oxygen from those who are faking it and deceiving society.
My sense is that some states, Russia being just one, are taking advantage of this gap between old and new media — and they are exacerbating the negative impacts created by a lack of modernization and vision of traditional media platforms. My sense is that for the old media to grow and compete, they need to be part of the media fragmentation wave, and rather than over-centralizing need to figure out how to disseminate quality news across a fragmented sphere of options.
This is hard to do - and it challenges the way newspapers and TV networks of record organize their work. But I believe that the fragmentation is not going away, and thus news organizations that want to assure their place in healthy civil society need to adapt.
About the author:
Steve Clemons is editor at large of The National Interest and has served as Editor at Large of The Hill, The Atlantic and Semafor as well as in senior editorial roles at National Journal and Quartz. He is also editor and publisher of the popular political blog, The Washington Note, and host of "The Bottom Line" which airs on the global network of Al Jazeera English. Clemons also Co-Chairs the US Initiative of GLOBSEC, one of Europe's most dynamic and important national and global security think tanks. Clemons serves on the Advisory Board of Future U.S. and CareLab, and is Chairman & CEO of Widehall LLC, a strategic communications and events firm that translates ideas into high-traction impact. Clemons previously served as Executive Vice President of the Economic Strategy Institute as well as of the New America Foundation, and was founding Executive Director of the Nixon Center, later renamed the Center for the National Interest. He was also Senior Economic and International Affairs Advisor to US Senator Jeff Bingaman.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect IFIMES official position.
Ljubljana/Vienna/Washington, 18 March 2025
[1] IFIMES - International Institute for Middle East and Balkan Studies, based in Ljubljana, Slovenia, has a special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council ECOSOC/UN in New York since 2018, and it is the publisher of the international scientific journal “European Perspectives”, link: https://www.europeanperspectives.org/en
[2] Following is the integral speech of Steve Clemons prepared exclusively for the IFIMES organized panel on a side of the OSCE Conference on Freedom of Media; “Media, Disruptions (Conflicts, Technologies), Truth and Reconciliation”, Vienna, Hofburg 17-18 March 2025.
