So I, along with probably many people in my generation primarily follow politics through YouTube, Twitter, Reddit and other social media sites. There are certainly negative aspects of getting the majority of your news that way, and I am not blind to those negatives. Regardless of the downsides, the internet as a whole is becoming increasingly important not only to politics, but life in general, particularly for my generation. COVID-19 and the restrictions on in-person meetings has certainly accelerated the importance of the internet for this election.
Oftentimes people like Kyle Kulinski (Secular Talk), The Young Turks (TYT), Steven Crowder, Ben Shapiro, Tim Pool and countless others on both the left and right will be extremely critical of "mainstream media" like The New York Times, NBC, CNN, The Washington Post and (if they are left wing) Fox News. Oftentimes their criticisms will be things like pointing out how biased the media is, or claiming the media is irrelevant, propaganda for any given party, or ineffectual. All these criticisms may have some truth to them, but those aforementioned media organization do a few things that those YouTubers do not, journalism. Despite the many flaws of the more "mainstream media," they do still do investigative journalism something that those YouTubers typically do not do. Additionally, channels like Secular Talk, TYT, and Tim Pool are fairly reliant on the "mainstream media" for content. They often use clips or articles from those organizations and give their opinions, which is why they are able to do what they do for a fraction of the cost what Fox or CNN spends. They really only do punditry which is often extremely reliant on the preexisting media complex. Don't get me wrong, I think that it is good that there are people who do not always agree with the more "mainstream media" and often push back and criticize them, but until they do more actual investigative journalism there still will be a need for the (however flawed) mainstream media.
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