Kathrine Nero
For most of my career, I knew exactly who was deciding what counted as news.
In a traditional TV newsroom, there was an assignment editor watching scanners and answering phones. A producer building the rundown. A news director weighing what mattered most.
Sometimes those decisions were smart. Sometimes they were debatable. Either way, talented human beings were deciding what would lead the newscast and what would have to wait until tomorrow.
Those same decisions are being made now on your social media feed.
The difference is that you may never know who made them.
A growing number of Americans get news from people rather than institutions. Pew Research Center reports that 21% of U.S. adults regularly get news from social media influencers who post about current events, political issues or social issues. Among adults ages 18 to 29, that number rises to 38%.
That means the person helping explain a protest or a Supreme Court decision may or may not have the experience, context and training to explain what is really happening.
There are real benefits to this shift.
News influencers can be funny, direct and easier to understand. They often speak to audiences traditional newsrooms have struggled to reach. They can explain a complicated issue in two minutes without making it feel like homework. Many are former journalists and are extremely capable and experienced.
Others are not. And telling the difference can be difficult.
Pew found that 65% of Americans who regularly get news from influencers said those creators helped them better understand current events and civic issues.
That matters. Journalism was created as a companion to and a checkpoint for American democracy, but if it is technically correct and nearly impossible to understand, it is not doing the public much good.
Still, something important has changed.
In a traditional newsroom, an editor does more than decide which story goes where. An editor asks whether the reporting is solid.
Is there another side? Did we verify the video? Is that number accurate? Are we presenting opinion as fact? Is the headline fair? Does the audience need more context before we publish?
Social media platforms have their own version of an editor.
Meet the algorithm.
The algorithm notices what you pause on, what makes you angry, what you share and what keeps you watching. It does not have to decide that a story is important. It only has to decide that you are likely to engage with it.
That is a very different editorial standard.
Imagine two people waking up in the same city on the same morning. They live five miles apart. They vote in the same election and send their children to schools governed by the same district.
One opens TikTok and sees a stream of posts about crime, government failure and public outrage.
The other sees explainers about housing, voting access and community activism.
Both may feel fully informed, but are seeing only a narrow part of the picture.
Pew’s research found that 69% of people who regularly get news from influencers mostly encounter it by chance rather than actively looking for it. Among adults ages 18 to 29, 77% say they usually happen across that news.
That is a striking idea: that a large part of our civic information is now arriving accidentally.
The feed has made the assignment.
That does not mean news influencers are necessarily bad. It does mean we need to understand the system surrounding them, and as consumers, we may need to do the work editors once did.
Before accepting a post as the whole story, ask a few questions.
Where did the information originate? Is the creator linking to original reporting, public records or source documents? Are they reporting something they observed, summarizing someone else’s work or offering an opinion? Are they being paid to promote a person, organization or position? What might be missing because the video had to fit into 60 seconds?
And perhaps the most revealing question:
What happens when the creator gets something wrong?
Newsrooms correct mistakes, although not always gracefully – or quickly. However imperfect, that correction process is part of journalism’s public promise.
A creator can quietly delete a post and move on.
The other concern is what we never see.
Newsrooms have always been accused of creating bubbles, favoring certain stories or overlooking communities. Some of those criticisms are deserved. Social media did not invent bias or bad judgment.
But a personalized feed can make the bubble feel natural – because it was built specifically for us.
Stories or viewpoints that appear repeatedly begin to seem like the most important or dominant ones. The voices absent from our feed can become nearly invisible, even forgotten.
Democracy depends on citizens sharing at least some common understanding of what is happening. We don’t have to agree on the solution, but we do need enough shared information to understand what we are arguing about.
That becomes difficult when every voter receives a different front page.
Social platforms and news influencers are now part of the modern information system. They are not going away, and there is no reason to dismiss the creativity, accessibility and new voices they bring.
But consumers need to become more conscious readers, viewers and citizens.
Every feed has an editor, even when there isn’t a journalist making the choices. Creators, platforms and our own online behavior all help determine what reaches us. That’s worth remembering when we mistake a personalized feed for a window on the world. Sometimes, it’s closer to a mirror.
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