ESPN talent explains why TikTok is more important than X

With so much news swirling on so many platforms at a time like this 2024 presidential campaign cycle, finding out what matters can be just as difficult as responding to it. And Mina Kimes, who covers sports for ESPN after years covering business for Bloomberg, believes the media is often dead wrong about where and how people get their information.

Discussing the rise of music and dance memes around presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in an episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out released Friday, Kimes explained why X (formerly Twitter) and the New York Times are “over-emphasized” by the media and liberal people online.

“Something that has really frustrated me over the course of this election cycle and reading Twitter, which is a key note, is that there’s this very large, maybe just very vocal contingent of online liberal left who are just obsessed with the New York Times ,” Kimes explained. “That strikes me as unbelievably wrong-headed, because I believe probably 99 percent of people who read the New York Times are already just going to vote Democrat. They’re preaching to the choir already.”

Indeed, while it became popular to rail against the Times during the rise of Donald Trump over the idea that the paper’s coverage was normalizing his politics and perspectives, the anti- NYT noise is just as loud as ever.

At the same time, other news sources and other platforms altogether aside from traditional web and social media sources have become more popular.

Kimes argued that memes like the ones melding viral videos of Harris with music from the Charli XCX album “Brat” actually have more power to sway broad swaths of the public than the specific language in an NYT story about the vice president. Those memes largely live on TikTok, which has more than twice as many monthly active users as X .

“I think Twitter is a very small platform that has its importance over-emphasized because all of us media people live on it,” Kimes said. “Many young people I have encountered in my life get their news from TikTok … and it’s not just young people. I think other platforms have more news influence right now than we know.”

We saw this in the sports world as well as for years, ESPN shows like SportsNation and Highly Questionable were built around viral videos and trends on Twitter. Hosts love to build strawman arguments against what appears to be a consensus on X rather than what fans actually believe.

Given that Kimes is one of the media personalities who is very active on X and likely gets news there, it is refreshing to hear someone in her position downplay its importance ahead of another chaotic election.

[ Pablo Torre Finds Out on YouTube ]

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