The term "Legacy Media" is effective propaganda because it instantly puts up a fake wall between conscious thought and subconscious subterfuge. A "media" can only be "legacy media" in the context of its perceived value, which means the term itself creates a self-referential loop. The very act of categorizing media as "legacy" presupposes the existence of a more authentic, more immediate form of media consumption that can only be defined by its opposition to what came before.
Propaganda can have logical inconsistencies and still be very effective. This propaganda's technical contradictions warrant examination:
The term "Legacy Media" gives victims of this propaganda a new way to think about established institutions. Instead of thinking about the actual attributes, characteristics, and contributions to public knowledge that existing media does or does not provide, victims can now judge media through some arbitrary hierarchical relationship to other forms of media.
But just as a tree's fundamental nature exists independently of the invention of plastic, traditional media organizations' core functions of investigation, verification, and public service journalism exist independently of newer digital platforms. Calling some media "legacy" serves primarily to diminish these fundamental attributes by suggesting they are merely outdated remnants of a bygone era, rather than ongoing, evolving practices that continue to shape our understanding of the world.
We didn't go around calling trees "legacy wood" after inventing plastics; the term "legacy wood" doesn't actually describe anything meaningful about a tree itself. Instead, it artificially frames the tree's existence primarily in relation to plastic, as if the tree's entire purpose and value can only be understood through its relationship to this newer material.
It's good propaganda because it's sticky—just like its predecessor propaganda Fake News, which also provided victims a quick and easy way to avoid confronting the prerequisite cognitive dissonance of effective mass media influence campaigns. It fits well with the pervasive attitude of consumerism that guides much of how reality is interpreted in capitalist societies: there are things and then later there are things that supersede and replace those previous things.
This consumerist framing of media evolution suggests that truth itself is just another product to be upgraded and replaced, rather than a process of investigation and verification. But to accept this is to accept that truth itself is not a social construct, but rather any construct that can be socialized. In short, the term Legacy Media is an artifact of performative groupthink, serving only to excuse a lack of self-reflection under the guise of some idealistic future state that, ironically, can only be achieved by adopting the worldview intrinsic to the propaganda.