Elite Silence
When credentialed voices exit the arena, the fringe controls discourse
In 1995 Tom Brokaw could read a short script and steer the evening conversation for half the country. In 2025, a torrent of TikTok creators upload “content” in the same few minutes, together commanding an audience that used to be limited to the Brokaws of the world.
Meanwhile, a Twitter account named “catturd2” has nearly four million followers, with daily engagement topping millions of impressions. Laura Loomer, a far-right Trump loyalist, has over 1,000 paid subscribers and nearly 90,000 total subscribers on her Substack. And for every Catturd or Loomer, there are thousands of smaller entities.
(I realize here, I am not doing myself any favors by being overly critical of this style of content. As disinterested I am with TikTok and Catturd’s commentary, both are genres or parts of genres that will be increasingly relevant in the future whether I respect them or not.)
The ratio of speakers to listeners has flipped from one trusted anchor per millions of viewers to one monetizing creator per a few thousand followers. In the din, many traditional gatekeepers are switching their microphones off or losing their audience. Elite silence is becoming as loud as the infinite chatter that replaces it.
Coinciding with this is the well-documented and precipitous drop in Americans' trust in the media. In 1976, 71% of Americans trusted the media. Today, it’s 31%.
Mid-century America trusted a handful of outlets. Walter Cronkite drew about 30 million nightly viewers; and three television networks controlled the vast majority of TV broadcasting. Today the creator economy counts more than 1.5m Americans earning a full-time income from online content, and studies estimate influencer counts in the hundreds of millions. Clicks focus on a few stars, but the sheer volume of talkers means even amateurs reach thousands.
Faced with endless hot-takes and outrage cycles, many credentialed voices now avoid the open square. Examples are easy to spot. A 2024 analysis showed that academic participation on Twitter has fallen steadily since 2020, with weekly output falling around 40% in the wake of Elon Musk’s twitter takeover. For all of the recent acceptance of thought leadership, many figures at major companies still don’t publicly participate out of fear. This has, though, resulted in a thriving idea economy of anonymous influencers.
The risk for participation is high for anyone with a traditional reputation. One stray quote can ricochet through dozens of outraged audiences, damaging an image built over decades. Algorithms reward engagement, not credentials, so an Ivy League philosopher and a conspiracy vlogger compete on nearly identical footing. It’s not hard to understand why academics and intellectuals are turned off by this environment, particularly with their comfort or acclimation to the prestige economy. Retreat is rational, even inevitable.
When credentialed voices deplatform themselves, confident amateurs rush in. The gap is filled by prolific posters, partisan podcasters, and pseudonymous pundits that equate reach with rigor. You know–people like myself. (Kidding)
Public trust fractures accordingly. Uncredentialed or heterodox audiences cheer the new orthodoxy while those who value expertise feel squeezed out. What you’re left with isn’t strictly improvement, just a redistribution of flaws.
The change in discourse affects more than our professional punditry or our leisure time. Policymakers must sift through a torrent of noise. Some overreact to whichever hashtag trends while others freeze, waiting for clarity that never comes. The sheer volume of social media incoming received is so large that it makes the entire process nearly useless.
The microphones cannot be turned off. The solution is to give genuine expertise a fighting chance inside the algorithmic soup.
The first and most important imperative is to stop punishing dissent. The fastest way to restore credibility is to end the quiet throttling of heterodox voices. De-platforming, demonetizing, or de-boosting unpopular views convinces audiences that institutions police ideology, not accuracy. Leave lawful speech up, log moderation decisions publicly, and let arguments rise or fall in daylight.
Also critical, elites must re-enter the arena. Avoiding abuse is understandable, but ideological flight solves nothing. Indeed, abandoning the discourse just hastens the destruction of their institutions. Leaving Twitter for Bluesky? You’re the problem. Be like me and have an account on both. Really, the ageless adage about reading news from a multitude of sources rings true for social media as well. Most people don’t know what the other side thinks or believes and that’s a problem.
Finally, as long as new media is here to stay, our institutions should treat clear public communication as a performance metric, not a liability. Tenure or bonus committees that count effective outreach alongside citations and earnings could empower experts to speak without fearing career penalty.
None of this revives the antiquated oligarchy of voices, and that is fine. A genuinely diverse marketplace of ideas is healthy—provided it is truly diverse, not curated to exclude uncomfortable opinions.
Elite silence is understandable, but it is not sustainable. The learned need to reclaim a share of the conversation, and the systems that mediate that conversation need to value learning again. The alternative is a nation where volume alone decides what is true, having traded one form of censorship for another.