Mainstream pundits usually aren't experts in their field

The career path for getting a major media platform doesn't have much to do with specialized knowledge anymore.

Yair Rosenberg, writing for The Atlantic:

[Hasan Piker] speaks confidently about things that he does not know much about. And this phenomenon is not unique to Piker. It’s characteristic of the new-media landscape, which now includes smashmouth streamers and podcasters of all political persuasions who talk about everything but are experts in nothing, and whose incentives run toward incendiary virality rather than accuracy.

Would you be shocked if I told you that Yair doesn’t have an academic background in media criticsm, or even in journalism? Here’s how he explained it himself back in 2019:

I didn’t actually set out to be a journalist. I did Jewish studies and history in university. I thought maybe I’d write some things on the side when I had something to say, but it turns out, people are willing to pay you to say things you wanted to say anyway. People kept offering me opportunities, and eventually I got the job that I have now.

While this may seem like a pretty improbable story on its face, it makes a lot more sense when you notice two more points about Yair’s background. First and foremost, Yair went to Harvard. Second, Yair is a radical Zionist, advancing what Yakov Hirsch calls “a worldview that prefers endless war‑management, de facto annexation, and regional work‑arounds to any settlement that would concede equal rights to Palestinians”.