A Theory of Media That Explains 15 Years of Politics
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What is Martin Gurri's theory about media and political upheaval?
So if you wanna come join us in person, come check that out. From New York Times Opinion, this is The Ezra Klein Show. Back in 2016, when Donald Trump won the first time, there was this book, it was self-published by a former CIA media analyst named Martin Gurry that became a kind of phenomenon in Silicon Valley. The book was called The Revolt of the Public. And what it did was describe these informational dynamics. It described the way that politics was changing because media was changing, because media and information got from scarce to abundant. And that had created constant recurrent crises for whoever was in power. The ability to control a narrative was gone. And in this world of fractured media, there was always an incentive and always an ability to show what was wrong with whoever was ruling. And this was, Gurry argued, fundamentally unstable. It knew how to destroy. It did not know how to build. Gurry has in his own politics evolved.
He didn't vote in 2016 or 2020, but he voted for Trump in 2024, and he's become much more positive about Trump this time than the first time. He's a visiting scholar at Mercatus, and he writes for the Free Press and Discourse and City Journal, among others. I watched him come to the view that actually maybe Trump is building something more stable and Maybe this revolt of the public is not merely negation, but that what Trump and Musk represent and are doing is actually the creation of a positive agenda that might endure. So I also thought his argument was worth hearing out. As always, my email is reclineshow at nytimes.com. Martin Gurry, welcome to the show. Great to be here. So in 2014, you published this book, The Revolt of the Public.
Lay out the basic argument you were making about attention and media and publics.
Well, the argument of the book goes back to my days at CIA, where I was one of the least sexy jobs you could have. I was an analyst of global media, and it was a relatively straightforward job. I mean, you could—if the president asked you, how are my policies playing in France, you went to two newspapers that were considered, those sources, authoritative. That's what we called them, right? Right.
How has the digital revolution affected trust in institutions?
Around the turn of the century, this digital earthquake generated this tsunami of information that was essentially unparalleled in human history, all right? And there's numbers backing that up. And we just got swamped. The first response, of course, of somebody who deals with authoritative information is, what's authoritative in this? infinite mass of stuff. The second part was, what's the effect of it? All right. What is the effect of going from a world where information is extremely valuable to one that is so abundant that you don't know what it's worth? And there was a tsunami of information that we could track it as different countries digitize. And right behind it, we could see ever increasing levels of social and political turbulence. Okay.
So the book It's trying to explain that. What became very clear was that our entire 21st century set of the institutions that hold up modern life, the government, the media, business, academia, were shaped in the 20th century. very top-down, very hierarchical, very I talk, you listen. So what the internet did, what the digital revolution did, was essentially create the possibility of this gigantic information sphere that was outside of the institutions, all right? And it turned to the institutions, and the first one it turned to was your business, media, right? It was this big fight between the blogs and the mainstream media was the enemy, right? And Sure enough, when that happens, you can find many errors and many mistakes and some bad faith in the institutions. And I think it's institutional failure and elite failure that sets the information agenda on the web. I mean, that's pretty clear.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is Martin Gurri's theory about media and political upheaval?
0:21–3:12
2
How has the digital revolution affected trust in institutions?
3:12–33:19
3
Why did Martin Gurri change his political stance?
33:19–46:04
4
What are the perceived dynamics of free speech under different administrations?
46:04–1:03:33