The Right-Wing Media Takeover Is Destroying America
The Right-Wing Media Takeover Is Destroying America
The purchase of The Baltimore Sun is further proof that conservative billionaires understand the power of media control. Why don’t their liberal counterparts get it?
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How different would things be out there in America if, 15 or 20 years ago, some rich liberal or consortium of liberals had had the wisdom to make a massive investment in local news? There were efforts along these lines, and sometimes they came to something. But they were small. What if, instead of right-wing Sinclair, some liberal company backed by a group of billionaires had bought up local TV stations or radio stations or newspapers all across the country?
Again, we can’t know, but we know this much: Support for Democrats has shriveled in rural America to near nonexistence, such that it is now next to impossible to imagine Democrats being elected to public office at nearly any level in about two-thirds of the country. It’s a tragedy. And it happened for one main reason: Right-wing media took over in these places and convinced people who live in them that liberals are all God-hating superwoke snowflakes who are nevertheless also capable of destroying civilization, and our side didn’t fight it. At all. If someone had formed a liberal Sinclair 20 years ago to gain reach into rural and small-town America, that story would be very different today.
There has in recent years been an impressive growth of nonprofit media outlets, led nationally by ProPublica and laying down roots everywhere, from the aforementioned Baltimore, where the Baltimore Banner has sometimes been scooping the Sun, to my home state of West Virginia, where Pulitzer Prize–winner Ken Ward’s Mountain State Spotlight is doing terrific reporting. These outlets are welcome indeed. They do sharp and necessary reporting. But they’re nonprofits, which, under IRS rules, cannot be partisan. They have to be apolitical.
I think one of the hard issues about making left-wing spin-machines is that a large chunk of the left would reject them. Following the old adage, "Democrats fall in love; Republicans fall in line," I fear that you can get the right to follow any ridiculous story because they are unified in wanting their 'side' to win, but a good number of Democrats would become disenchanted by fake news and may even become turncoats if asked to believe muckraking spin as Truth. Surely there's a good number of low-interest left-leaners who would be happy to believe and follow half-truths and lies, but I doubt Democrats would get the same consensus of accepting such as good politics the way Republicans do.
This right here. There's simply no mirror image of Fox News or Breitbart on the left, nor would I want one.
The problem is that we have a wildly uneven playing field where one side refuses to play by the rules. There's no good faith engagement with right-wing media because they will say and do whatever it takes, destroy whatever and whomever it takes, lie, cheat, spin, etc. to achieve their goals. The right wing is working in a fully scorched earth mentality. It doesn't matter if what they're doing hurts themselves, their followers, whomever: they are 100% fueled by hatred and a desire for dominance, and if it means burning the whole country down to get what they want, that's just fine to them. A while back I saw someone say "Republicans would let Trump take a shit in their mouths as long as a Liberal had to smell it" and it never fails to be true.
There's simply nothing like that on the left, and I totally agree that it wouldn't be effective even if there were. Truth means nothing to the Right. But using spin and rage-baiting is not something that's part of a leftist ideal. For people who believe in truth, equality, equity, basic human decency, and a desire to actually build a society that cares about the people in it, using tactics like that are antithetical.
I don't know what the answer is though. As someone up the thread pointed out, there's no such thing as a liberal billionaire, and even if there were, trying to buy back all of the media in the country wouldn't help. It would just feed the right's narratives even further. But what the fuck do we do when we have media that presents "Let's have a more caring and compassionate society" and "We think entire groups of people shouldn't exist" as equal ideas that should be given equal weight and discourse?
Yeah. The mirror image of MSNBC or John Stewart, is something like the Wall Street Journal.
The mirror image of Fox News is like hexbear or lemmygrad, except put on TV for a majority of the country to watch for a majority of their picture of the world and accept uncritically. I think this article actually explains very well why it should be treated as a lot more cause for alarm than it is.
Ah good point. Tankies are indeed a bit like this on the left-wing side. I forgot about them.
The interesting thing with Tankies is that many of them are blatantly pro-autocrat, believing wholeheartedly that the single-party state needs a singular leader with essentially unlimited power vested in them in order to prevent counter-revolutionary movements, when in actuality that power is just used to quash the whole DotP and 'stateless' aspiration parts, and they just end up supporting right-wing outcomes like Putin and Xi, and being unwilling to admit that's what they are.
As someone up the thread pointed out, there’s no such thing as a liberal billionaire
I don't know about that. Bill Gates is pretty decent these days. In fact he probably always was a decent human being, but his poor business practices overshadowed that in the past. Tim Cook seems a pretty decent person too and just him coming out did a lot for the LGBT community. I think most Silicon Valley CEOs are pretty progressive in fact (Musk excluded obviously)
They're pretty right-wing economically due to being CEOs (and billionaires) but fairly left-wing socially.
Unfortunately that's not really true. Silicon Valley has deep roots in Libertarianism. Some of them might talk the "fiscally conservative, socially liberal" talk, but that's becoming more and more rare. People like Marc Andreesen, Peter Thiel, Musk, Bezos, Zuck, et al are deeply terrifying, and are openly espousing racist and eugencist beliefs.
Bill Gates is pretty decent these days. In fact he probably always was a decent human being, but his poor business practices overshadowed that in the past
Actually he's a deeply terrible person. Even outside of swallowing up and destroying competition and pushing monopolistic business practices, he was a tyrant to work for, treated everyone around him like shit, sexually harassed multiple women, and has ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
Actually he’s a deeply terrible person. Even outside of swallowing up and destroying competition and pushing monopolistic business practices, he was a tyrant to work for, treated everyone around him like shit, sexually harassed multiple women, and has ties to Jeffrey Epstein...
Wow. I had no idea. I'm sure you're right, I don't really follow US media very well. I just remember seeing him give a cool gift during secret santa on reddit and thinking "Huh this guy actually turned out okay".
Some of them might talk the “fiscally conservative, socially liberal” talk, but that’s becoming more and more rare. People like Marc Andreesen, Peter Thiel, Musk, Bezos, Zuck, et al are deeply terrifying, and are openly espousing racist and eugencist beliefs.
Hmm ok, I thought it was more liberal there. Especially because I've heard it's a good and inclusive workplace etc. But like I said, I'm not very aware of the US so I stand corrected. Thank you.
I disagree about there being no mirror image. There are a ton of "news" sources that you probably dismissed for the same reasons as Fox. It's not just how far left or right, but of what quality "journalism" is being used. It also plays directly into the far-right's game of "both sides are the same".
The mirror of Fox isn't MSNBC; it's the Huffington Post.
It's not though. Huffington Post has no equivalent of Tucker Carlson or Jeanine Pirro, just asking questions about how Trump has already set up concentration camps for Democrats and has 100,000s of them imprisoned in secret already, or Alina Habba is secretly a man, or anyone who's a Republican is literal demon spawn who's drinking the semen of Alex Jones that they get through mail order so they can form a secret demonic pact to resurrect Ronald Reagan. Huffington Post has a left-wing bent and reports bad stories about Trump when they're newsworthy. That's it. Fox's deliberate and explicit total fictions, carefully crafted for maximum emotional impact to produce a particular political result, have no equivalent anywhere in journalism.
Yeah, i have no particular love for Huffington Post. They're often overly sensational, and also built their company on the backs of unpaid writers and journalists. But they're not fabricating stories from whole cloth to whip up a hate mob.
Absolutely. I'm not American but very left-wing and I would not support any fake news spin campaigns.
We have to be better than the right-wingers. If we use the same tactics a win is meaningless. We still have principles and ideals. "Kicking the other guy down" is not a win.