Channel 5, the man-on-the-street YouTube channel, gave a list of its promotion email subscribers to Hunter Biden, who was planning on using it promote his new memecoin $LAPTOP. I’m not gonna explain the situation beyond that here, so if all of these read as hieroglyphics to you, then feel free to stop here and save yourself.
Andrew Callaghan, who runs Channel 5, has long been a critic of the mainstream media, and built up Channel 5 (previously All Gas, No Breaks) to showcase the views that he feels are often ignored by journalists. Fair enough! I’m not Charlie Brown here, with the football that is ethical journalism that mainstream outlets (Lucy) purport to demonstrate. If that makes sense. There is a reason why many have gravitated to Channel 5 as a project and that is because they are looking for voices that they wouldn’t otherwise get from any journalist or even from any opinion section. And fair enough!!! I want independent journalism to not only be a source of news that exists out there in the world, but I want it to be a genuine competing force against our institutions to make them better. But Callaghan is a quack and he shouldn’t be the figure to represent Gen Z journalism. At a time when our media ecosystem is already in its pathetic state, with people depending on lowly short-form videos to form their understanding of the world, Callaghan and other unscrupulous individuals of his ilk are antibiotics killing off the pre- and probiotics in our media gut microbiome. If that makes sense.
Callaghan is accountable to only his audience, and thankfully there seems to have been enough pushback on this because he has since apologized for the incident, saying that his nonstop work for 2 months led to his lapse in judgement. But this is not sustainable a model to lend itself to be a part of a healthy media ecosystem. Of course being a journalist is hard work. This is why you have editors, production staff, interns, and importantly, lawyers who can not only pick up more work, but create an environment of checks and balances.
I don’t work in media, but as a “young person” (I am 27) who works in the general field of “information gathering and delivery” (public policy consulting), I find the direction my cohort is headed in to be heart-achingly frustrating. The democratization of the job of the messenger, thanks to the internet, seemed liberating in the days of the early Obama era, when any disenfranchised group could bring attention to their cause. And while, even in a text-dominant internet space, there is still a plethora of dis/misinformation and deliberate smear campaigns, the “news” sections on YouTube and TikTok have never looked bleaker.
I need my fellow 20-somethings to demand more integrity of themselves and of the people they follow and listen to. I’m not even suggesting that all young people do 20 pushups and get their hands on a New York Times subscription — Mother Jones, ProPublica, 404media, The Baffler are just the tip of the iceberg to media sites that I believe have more grit than Channel 5. Do good work, and you will be rewarded. Reward good work, and that is the reward in and of itself.
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