Throughout this election cycle, Don Lemon took the pulse of the elections person by person in cities across the country. During his visits, the former CNN personality spoke with all kinds of people, gauging their feelings on Vice President Kamala Harris And Donald Trumppresident elected for the second time.

Snippets of Lemon’s vox pop conversations proved popular and were shared and re-shared on social media. Some answers were surprising. Many were predictable but entertaining, capturing a cross-section of humanity in our politics.

But on the cold November morning after Trump’s re-election, we should recognize the ways in which these battlefield interactions put us on notice. I’m not talking about the election result, although, like “The Don Lemon ShowThe host told his former CNN colleagues that he learned some things that the Harris campaign allegedly ignored.

What I’m referring to is something that most news organizations, pundits, and all devotees of unreformed polling have not accepted, namely the extent to which the public’s aversion to facts and information has reorganized our reality.

This isn’t really breaking news. Years of polls cite the downward trend in public trust in establishment news and the simultaneous rise and expansion of the right-wing media ecosystem.

But as we examine what went wrong in election coverage – again, and probably not for the last time – part of that reckoning requires studying why so many voters ignored informed warnings about what what a second Trump term would mean for the world.

Lemon’s snippets of conversations contain some clues, including how Gen Z digests political news. The TL;DR version? This is not the case. For them, mainstream news doesn’t exist because facts are what they Elon Musk’s social media platform do it, if it matters at all.

There were (non)voters for the first time like the two young women who told Lemon they didn’t plan to vote or had already done so, and for Trump. For what? “No reason. No details,” one told Lemon when asked to explain her choice of candidate, which she did not elaborate on. Her partner, who wasn’t voting, said she would choose Trump if she voted, but couldn’t say why, other than: “That’s just where I’m from.”

Another young woman in Georgia had already voted for Trump, explaining that his father had been a cop for 28 years and was running for sheriff.

When Lemon asked how her vote fit with the fact that Trump supporters attacked police officers at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, she admitted that she hadn’t talked to her father about “all of that, for January 6.” . Then she shared an enlightening insight. “I think everything is confusing. And I think a lot of it depends on how you view the person,” explaining that most people vote based on who they like or don’t like. “I don’t think people are thinking about what this is actually going to do economically and everything else.”

Few journalists are fans of direct interviews. In the traditional newsrooms of yesteryear, the job of roving reporter fell to interns or green journalists to pay their dues. It’s a difficult task, because most people don’t want to talk to a journalist, either because they don’t have the time or because they despise journalists.

Having been on both sides of these microphones, I get it. Asking a stranger for your opinion on an issue of the day that you may be familiar with or care very little about is intrusive and off-putting. Journalists may not be fans of this format, but social media content producers love it. The same goes for comedians like Jimmy Kimmel, whose roving segments regularly entertain audiences by gleefully reminding how little the public knows. . . All.

Entire TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram accounts thrive on recording the opinions and reactions of random people willing to play with whatever their brand stands for. Meeting news consumers on these platforms is crucial. Especially TikTok, which 39% of adults under 30 cite as a regular source of information, according to a Pew Research Center survey.

But it’s not just about being there. Investigators like Lemon prove that there is an art to successful reporting in the field. You can tell his subjects enjoy talking with him. His familiarity as a former prime-time CNN host explains part of that, but I doubt most of the Gen Z voters he spoke with would recognize him from cable news.

He is friendly, knowledgeable, curious and holds a microphone. For members of an age group that dedicates their every move to video, that’s really all they need.

Lemon made his support for Harris clear throughout the fall. But when he speaks to Trump voters and gently challenges their understanding of policies that they may or may not understand, he is not attacking them.

He peppers a few with quick rebuttals in an attempt to show why their reasons don’t fit the facts, but it feels like he’s not trying to win a debate so much as giving his subjects the opportunity to double the bet.

Lemon doesn’t even flinch when a man politely explains one of the reasons he chooses Trump is that he does not defend LGBTQ rights and that “it is clearly in the Bible that you cannot be gay”, unaware that his interviewer is a gay man.

To a person, their answers were offered in a spirit of conviviality and frankness, facilitating a better understanding of their motivations. Unsurprisingly, a lot of it comes down to fear.

It would be dishonest of me to refrain from mentioning the other common finding, which is widespread ignorance – that is, lack of knowledge, education or awareness. Part of this is the product of an education system stripped of embarrassing history and basic civics lessons by conservative lobbyists and politicians.

It’s much more of a reductive view that news is little more than misleading noise, which is why there’s a fierce appeal to listening to a handful of clear voices claiming to have the answer. A North Carolina man Lemon spoke to summed up his reasons for voting for Trump this way.

“All the propaganda has me leaning towards Trump. I don’t know,” he said.

“But what do you mean? What propaganda? » asked Citron.

“Everything that is outside of me. You know, all my sources of information. You know, nothing is original. Lemon asked him to cite examples. He couldn’t. But he found it easier to explain why he didn’t like Harris — again, without giving factual examples.

The common sentiment among heavy news consumers and the chattering class is that poorly informed voters are one of the main reasons for Trump’s victory. This ignores a vital truism that is driving Gen Z to become the Rogans of the world: For them, people who get their news from networks, cables, and traditional media outlets that once printed blog posts on paper are the demographic low level of information.

Podcasters validate their fears and doubts, cite spurious research, or, more speciously, cite the boilerplate source of “some” or “they” without proof.

They encourage inordinate skepticism about everything. To be clear, this is not healthy skepticism, the foundation of critical thinking. It is not a skepticism that encourages consulting accredited experts or peer-reviewed research, seeking solid sources, or anything beyond superficial research.

Instead of questioning everything, he preaches the virtue of only believing the confident voices of those who validate their anxieties without offering honest reasons or answers as to why they exist. It encourages us to abdicate our duty to stay informed about what those in power are doing or intending to do to us.

Stephen Colbert, in his satirical form as host of Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report,” defined this phenomenon as “truthiness,” a term that has since become a dictionary entry. Merriam-Webster defines it as “a truthful or apparently truthful quality that is claimed for something not because of supporting facts or evidence, but because of the feeling that it is true or the desire for it to be true.”

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In 2005, when he coined the term, Colbert was referring to the worldview espoused by Fox News and conservative radio. Now it defines how many people interact with the waking world in the modern era.

My former Salon colleague Matthew Sheffield pointed out on election night that “the average American is surrounded by a partisan media that brainwashes him. There are now 7 right-wing infotainment channels and 1 MSNBC. Not included in this tally are dozens of right-wing, personality-driven podcasts and YouTube channels, as well as influential entertainment figures like Joe Rogan whose conversation with Trump sold it to a demographic who avoids standard information: white students, mainly men.

The electorate that brought Trump back to power trusts their fears and the patriarchal order and takes as gospel the conversational statements that are the podcast personality’s specialty. Among the votes that don’t focus on these sources, there is a deep sense of disconnection or little idea that the election matters.

This is why Lemon’s action in this election cycle has been crucial. He’s one of the few journalists who consistently takes the public’s temperature outside of network studios and organizes groups of undecided voters, not to mention the highest profile people. And if you’ve been paying attention to his discussions, the outcome of this election may not have shocked you as much, even if it may have scared you to the core.