The mainstream media destroyed its own credibility by being so obviously in the tank for lefty causes for so many years.
Yeah, I know what you're going to say. My liberal friends also hit me with a "well, akshually..." and they usually point to some analysis by a totally not biased "fact checking" outfit like Politifact or something like that. (I mean, c'mon! "Politics" is literally in the name of the site!)
They insist there's no bias after I bring up things like the Journolist affair or Ron Schiller, the NPR Executive caught on tape actually saying that conservatives are uneducated and anti-intellectual.
One more thing about Journolist - that ended Ezra Klein's career in journalism, right? Haha, only kidding. He went on to create a new media company, Vox, that has been pretty successful for reasons I can't fathom. Why would you believe anything they publish?
The oligarchs who have been supporting this worldwide push to end representative democracy in favor of authoritarianism are the same oligarchs who own and control the world's media empires. It's time to stop acting surprised by media bias and start taking back popular democratic control of governments.
You seem to operate under the assumption as if the current authoritarian populist wave across the world is not representative of large segments of population, as if it's something that is imposed by some tiny minority against an overwhelming unwilling majority. Nothing could be further from the truth. The sad reality is that the authoritarian populism is itself a manifestation of "popular democratic control of governments", so the whatever toolbox you have in mind to combat it, that may have been relevant to various authoritarian regimes in the previous century, simply not going to work here.
The US press has already become an authoritarian lapdog. Certain sectors have become full on propaganda outlets for the GOP right wing. Those outlets who haven't gone full in, refuse to defend our democracy and put the Biden administration under a microscope so they can "appear" to be "fair" to both sides when in truth they're playing into the right's hands. If and when the fascist right takes over this country, the press will have been a willing accomplice.
I agree with much of that. But my concern is with the non-rightwing media. If it gets too thoroughly discredited by the right, it'll lose confidence in itself and become either neutered or a fullblown lap dog. That would be very dangerous.
The non-rightwing media is the entity holding Biden under a much higher standard of criticism than they did for Trump. They feel they have to overly criticize Biden and the Dems for the same reason they held back criticism of Trump and his complicit GOP, to appear "fair". They're playing into the right's hands.
The mainstream media destroyed its own credibility by being so obviously in the tank for lefty causes for so many years.
Yeah, I know what you're going to say. My liberal friends also hit me with a "well, akshually..." and they usually point to some analysis by a totally not biased "fact checking" outfit like Politifact or something like that. (I mean, c'mon! "Politics" is literally in the name of the site!)
They insist there's no bias after I bring up things like the Journolist affair or Ron Schiller, the NPR Executive caught on tape actually saying that conservatives are uneducated and anti-intellectual.
One more thing about Journolist - that ended Ezra Klein's career in journalism, right? Haha, only kidding. He went on to create a new media company, Vox, that has been pretty successful for reasons I can't fathom. Why would you believe anything they publish?
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/0720/JournoList-Is-call-them-racists-a-liberal-media-tactic
https://archives.cjr.org/campaign_desk/schillers_resignation_weakens.php
The oligarchs who have been supporting this worldwide push to end representative democracy in favor of authoritarianism are the same oligarchs who own and control the world's media empires. It's time to stop acting surprised by media bias and start taking back popular democratic control of governments.
You seem to operate under the assumption as if the current authoritarian populist wave across the world is not representative of large segments of population, as if it's something that is imposed by some tiny minority against an overwhelming unwilling majority. Nothing could be further from the truth. The sad reality is that the authoritarian populism is itself a manifestation of "popular democratic control of governments", so the whatever toolbox you have in mind to combat it, that may have been relevant to various authoritarian regimes in the previous century, simply not going to work here.
The US press has already become an authoritarian lapdog. Certain sectors have become full on propaganda outlets for the GOP right wing. Those outlets who haven't gone full in, refuse to defend our democracy and put the Biden administration under a microscope so they can "appear" to be "fair" to both sides when in truth they're playing into the right's hands. If and when the fascist right takes over this country, the press will have been a willing accomplice.
I agree with much of that. But my concern is with the non-rightwing media. If it gets too thoroughly discredited by the right, it'll lose confidence in itself and become either neutered or a fullblown lap dog. That would be very dangerous.
The non-rightwing media is the entity holding Biden under a much higher standard of criticism than they did for Trump. They feel they have to overly criticize Biden and the Dems for the same reason they held back criticism of Trump and his complicit GOP, to appear "fair". They're playing into the right's hands.