Everywhere we turn, junk media floods our lives. Engineered for speed, not depth, it’s designed to grab attention, not deepen understanding or provide opportunities for learning. Junk media thrives on outrage, repetition, and distraction. It feeds us what we already believe, exasperates what we already fear. It is easy to consume, hard to digest, and ultimately corrosive to our capacity to connect with each other. It has no allegiance to the truth at all.
The danger of junk media is not only in what it says but in what it does to us. It chips away at our ability to discern truth from noise. It flattens the complexity of human experience into headlines and hashtags. It makes us impatient, cynical, and mistrustful. Over time, junk media does what junk food does. It leaves us bloated, exhausted, and malnourished. Even more so, it leaves us isolated, silenced, and disenfranchised. And it also seems to be making us cowards.
Public media, at its best, can combat these forces. It can provide community and belonging, can ground you in story and make you dance around your kitchen. It can provide a foundation to stand on, a belief system informed by plurality, and a backbone in the face of adversity.
At KALW we call this “slow media,” or even “whole media,” as compared to junk and fast food. Whole media is created with care. It respects the humanity and intelligence of our audiences. It seeks to heal, not harm. It values curiosity over certainty, depth over distraction, listening over shouting, resolve over cowardice. It is organic in the truest sense, grown in community, built from the voices of people who live here.
It gives space for new ideas to breathe, for stories to unfold, for music to move us. It does not reduce people to caricatures or conflicts. It invites us to see the fullness of others and, in doing so, to better understand ourselves.
If public media can and should serve as civic infrastructure, then it must be built with healthy intentions in mind. Just as we would never build a bridge out of brittle steel, we cannot build democracy on disposable truths. Civic infrastructure must be sturdy, honest, and designed to carry the weight of human experience. It must be built to support us all.
This is the work we are committed to. To resist the lure of junk media and to provide something whole, something sustaining. Because what we take in shapes how we live. And the future of our shared life depends on what we choose to feed ourselves and one another.
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This piece was brought to you by KALW Speaks, a monthly series of essays from KALW staff and contributors, exploring the ideas that drive our work. Each of these essays reflect our commitment to innovation and invites you into a deeper conversation about the future of public media.
Learn more: From A Whisper To A Roar.
