On yesterday’s rumor debacle, it’s an interesting reflection of what corporate/mainstream platforms like X elevate. Take Jacobin and The New Statesman, who are both generally considered credible but who ran Noam’s obituaries yesterday without first verifying if he had actually died. This plus millions of tweets blew up in a fake news explosion.

Both publications gave into pressure to be first, be shocking, and therefore be the most viral over prioritizing journalistic rigor. This is a demonstration of how the media ecosystem pressures publications to seek virality over trust in a systemic way. It’s only logical that if you want to survive and thrive as a publication or journalist, you will respond to the pressure that this structure applies. So though it’s no excuse, we can understand how it happened.

But as users/consumers of media, this does not serve us well at all.