There's merit to the argument that the media is complicit in all this considering they directly profit from it. I wish more people would take classes to learn about how mass media / propaganda operates.
I mean the way I look at it, is there's a stark divide between the huge, vertically and horizontally integrated, cross-platform-ownership, conglomerates and the other 5%. Media's become so ridiculously hyper-consolidated in the past four years, News Corp isn't even on the map any more -- hell, Hearst is bigger nowadays.
When you start talking about the big four, my position is "they're absolutely complicit, let 'em burn". Three of the biggest winners out of the Trump tax cuts were AT&T, Comcast, and Disney, all of which famous for massive layoffs and buybacks after the cuts despite record profits. All three of which making an absolute killing selling Trump derangement to the masses.
Then you have the vanity project outlets -- the HuffPo's, the Politico's, the Hill's, sadly WashPo post-Bezos -- they're gonna do what they're gonna do, they're at the mercy of their handpicked editorial boards. They're still operating with profit motive, but it's profit motive plus advancing partisan cause. So, fuck them too as far as I'm concerned.
You want to talk about the smaller, legacy outlets..then yeah, they're not really blameworthy for the media's overall race to the bottom. NYT's #3 in circulation in the US, but compared to cable news it's freakin' peanuts. And yeah, NYT's suffered greatly in the past few years, but the outlet's more toxic elements rage quit after the Tom Cotton fiasco and the outlet has a chance of doing quality reporting again.
And, the media literacy thing in the "era of fake news" is pretty much the smoking gun of all smoking guns to me. The biggest and most prominent outlets, if anything, are actively promoting the cause of media
illiteracy, simply by asserting audiences should merely trust and uncritically consume "approved" sources, whilst rejecting "unapproved" sources by identity alone. And, this is at the same time FANG's are openly abusing Section 230 protection to unilaterally name themselves sole arbiter of truth in online communication, when these corporations have each individual proven themselves the
least trustworthy actors on the internet.
Not once, in all my years of (admittedly elective) journalism education, poli sci and history education, activism, organization, and political activity, have I
ever heard a journalist -- current, retired, scholar, lecturer -- say in all seriousness "yeah, you should just trust the news" the way talking heads have the past four years to a decade. In fact, what I've heard the most is the exact
opposite -- that if someone says that to you, and they're not encouraging you to use your own judgment and engage in your own rational inquiry, the last thing they are is a journalist and the last thing you should do is listen to them.
And I used to work with my campus' journalism department and campus newspaper, to co-host media literacy workshops and seminars for the public. And let me tell you, it was a
hell of a fight getting my campus and state ACLU on board with electronic freedoms and media literacy seminars, because they didn't see the vested civil liberties interest in it and feel it was a priority issue at the time (bet they fuckin' do now).
Trump plays the media like a fiddle and he knows it and he benefits from it. He knows saying all this crazy shit is going to get him media attention and they give it to him on a silver platter every day. It's so much that people are in fact becoming desensitized to it and why, I think personally, he keeps getting away with all the stupid shit he does, because the media does indeed make a huff about every little thing he does.
I don't disagree, I just take issue calling it a scenario of manipulation as that implies a one-way relationship. To me, it's very much two-way, and the conversation needs to be centered on how the mass media benefits from the Trump administration to get a clear portrait of how and why the country is as fucked as it is right now.
I didn't vote for Trump in 2016, but I distinctly remember not at all being surprised when he won just due to the media coverage he got (yes, I know popular vote, etc).
I mean, yeah. The bastard got nearly six billion in earned media. That wasn't just the single biggest source of campaign funding in American history, what Trump got in earned media alone for 2016 was as much if not more than the total cost of 2012, accounting for hard and soft money and independent expenditure for both parties, and the operational and administrative cost of the election itself. Hillary only got three and a half billion in earned media, and the total cost of the election itself was eleven billion if I remember numbers right.
That the US doesn't even count earned media as campaign funding let alone after 2016, or even discuss the topic as a salient issue in election finance, is absolutely criminal.
USA
