What’s Wrong with the Media?
Frankly, it has echoed the rightward slide of our political processes!
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m an old guy. Usually, that’s not that important, but here, it is, and it is because I’ve got a lifetime of experience in reading and watching the American media that almost all of the younger folks don’t. I remember as a kid watching Walter Cronkite and all the other well knowns we heard the news from in our younger days.
The early years, when you could actually trust what they said. When there wasn’t actually a “right-wing media” or a “left-wing media”. It was just the media, and the government required them to cover BOTH SIDES of political issues, and media figures clearly labeled the news as news and editorializing as just that — their opinion.
While the rest of us watched in fascination as the political spectrum was dragged (quite willingly and not kicking and screaming) rightwards to where the GOP today is a far-right-wing authoritarian party and the Democrats are where the Republicans were in Eisenhower’s day, we were so fascinated with that shit show that we missed the obvious.
That the media got dragged alongside, albeit a bit slower.
Of course the same failures are still there — they constantly forget (or just don’t think about) checking their sources to be sure they aren’t foreign disinformation agents pushing divisive crap at us, so the usefulness of the Russian Disinformation Services are still operating at their old full on efficiency, and the Chinese are getting better than they used to be.
Hell, there was a news article this morning that ISRAEL just pushed a disinformation effort at US lawmakers and news media over their Gaza efforts! You have to wonder how much of that got pushed at the White House and how effective it was.
I know it’ll be impossible to go back, but damn, I do miss the media of the past when at the very least, I didn’t have to go to two separate news channels to see both sides of an issue, AND that I could at least mostly trust what they told me.
The biggest failure of American companies that host our social media is their inability to tell when a foreign adversary is creating literally hundreds of not thousands of fake accounts solely to push disinformation. Or, maybe their lack of desire to do that. Not to mention that a lot of us suspect that both Facebook and X don’t want to do that because they secretly support the right?
Never forget my theory about Rich White Men (RWM). Musk is the perfect example of that and he does very little to hide his allegiance. Those folks have a stake in the game of the right — to maintain and increase the influence and control of the wealthiest Americans over our economy and the government. And frankly, information control (and the dissemination of DISinformation) is a very large part of that.
Which makes me almost want to cry when I see publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post — two news outlets with solid records in the past of more truthful and trustworthy reporting (as in the distant past) so much so that the old fashioned style is now proclaimed by the right wing as “left-wing” propaganda — now failing to see how their own reporting has been manipulated and dragged rightwards.
I watch MSNBC regularly. Rachael Maddow is one of my favorites. While I do understand that her monologues at the beginning of her shows are indeed her personal editorializing, and thus her OPINIONS of the events she is talking about, the one thing I can trust is her truthfulness as she reports EVENTS and what people say. True to current standards, she does often intertwine the reporting and her opinions. But I cannot fully blame her for that, EVERYONE in the news business does that now.
And they do because a certain president (cough-Reagan-cough) repealed the Fairness Doctrine that required news outlets to report both sides fairly and to separate news from opinion.
We need to push the government to bring that back, and we need to ensure that it applies to media on the Internet also, and not just (as that old doctrine did) to the broadcasts on air. A lot of folks have claimed that was because of a lack of government control over the internet vs. actual broadcast media, and that needs to be changed to allow that Doctrine to be brought back and applied to all news outlets. (Or anyone claiming to be news — Fox “News”, I’m talking to you!)
It needs to be brought back because the current ability of anyone anywhere to just push disinformation is what is dividing and separating our country into distinctly divided camps. Frankly, that’s Russia’s doing, and we need, as a country, to recognize it and fight back.
I know, First Amendment and all that. But the rights to free speech are NOT absolute. The SCOTUS has, in the past, recognized that and enshrined it in their rulings. Harmful speech CAN be restricted and punished. As in the famous thing about crying “fire” in a crowded theater. Well, I would argue that the kind of crap pushed by the right wing folks like Steve Bannon are exactly that kind of harmful to our political environment. And while much fewer and farther between, any left wingers doing that aren’t much better.
The Fairness Doctrine — bring it back and make it stronger and more inclusive so it can protect and defend our democracy — isn’t that what our Constitution is all about?
Thanks for reading! Comment, please if you’ve further ideas about this.
