this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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Will Bunch expresses what I've been thinking since Trump was elected. American democracy is under attack from within. The fascists who yearn for an authoritarian government in the media are promoting it, and the media who supposedly don't support it fail to recognize it. They are busy trying to follow the political playbook of the 20th century.

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[–] [email protected] 110 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The press isn't monolithic. This is one journalist stating their opinion and analysis of what the rest of the industry needs to focus on.

[–] [email protected] 59 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Came here to say this. There is some excellent, probing journalism out there. The problem is, it's not very profitable

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

and in there lies the rub, everybody's gotta fill their own ricebowl

[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It is far more monolithic than people realize. Folks think that only the Fox News if the world were being overly generous to Trump when he was just a candidate. The reality is that all mass market news outlets were.

I was a loooong time listener of NPR, a news outlets that most would probably consider as neutral or even left of center as you'll get from US mass media. And I totally lost respect for them hearing them cover Trump as a candidate. Even now, I can just about hear Steve Inskeep chuckling after a Trump speech and simply never taking him as a serious candidate. This was someone who was running for the highest office in the land. He would have access to our nuclear codes. And these fucken reporters, who I had previously held in high regard, were just laughing at some of the insane antics that Donald was pulling. They were letting this shit slide while they would have roasted any other candidate if they had said the same thing.

And it's not just NPR but any mass media news outlets acted the same way. That's where the majority of Americans get their news and they were all doing the same things.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

NPR = "Nice Polite Republicans".

Among the left, it's always been a running joke that outlets like PBS (Petroleum Broadcast System) and NPR are somehow agents of liberalism.

I seem to recall NPR's own ombudsman said they rely too much on corporate/conservative sources. They are not nearly as "liberal" as the unhinged right wing declares they are.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

This all goes back to Reagan. He's the one who really popularized the term "liberal media". In labeling the media supposedly liberal (which it really wasn't), it made that same media shift to the right because they naively didn't want to be thought of as being biased. Well you keep doing that for some 50 years and even mass media outlets are right of center these days, and that doesn't even include the really right wing outlets like Fox.

Then there is also the whole issue of media consolidation and corporate media. So you have fewer media outlets and those outlets are richer and more controlled by corporate interests. Corporations by default will lean to the right. So they will tend to naturally paint stories with a pro business, anti worker lean.

It's all a big mess these days, so when I see these stories when people deep within the industry bemoan Trump, I can only help but consider these people as part of the problem.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

NPR isn't perfect but damn if it isn't one of the best we've got. NPR, Reuters, Al Jezeera sometimes, that's all I got for being dependable. Washington Post can be surprisingly neutral considering who they're owned by. Who do you pay attention to?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I refuse to give NPR any more of my time anymore. I used to have a very long commute so for many years my radio was locked in on them all the time (the fact that music stations are shit these days doesn't help either). Not any more. I'll look at their stories if they come across my news feed these days, but they lost their credibility with how they handled Trump with kid gloves and they lost even more credibility with how they tried to sink Bidens agenda more recently.

Our news media gives one free pass after another to Republicans and holds Democrats to impossibly high standards.

In terms of what I listen to now, it's a random assortment of what comes through my feed. I really haven't had a good "home" for news in a while and I don't like that, but reading multiple sources is probably the best move regardless since you can see how various outlets spin the same story. I'd love to find some slick app that compiled many outlets so I could read them on my tablet that filtered out the noise but I've yet to find that solution.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I get it, I agree that NPR got weird for a bit there.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Check out ground news. It's designed to clearly and fairly show bias in news coverage and lets you compare multiple sources side by side. Their free level is not very good imo but the cheapest subscription adds a good amount of utility and the higher tiers even include media ownership breakdowns so you can see whose money is behind which coverage.

They also have optional emails like a "burst your bubble" newsletter that showcases blindspots for left right and center.

My one gripe is that they consider too many sources "left" when they are mostly just aligned with a center-progressive demographic, but that's a minor quibble for me.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

It isn't, I totally agree, but there are far fewer independently owned news outlets and far fewer owners than ever. And that is part of the reason we are here.

But, yeah, this is one of a few journalists reporting on what is actually happening with regard to Republican authoritarianism.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If you can control who gets a job based on their background, (example: "no socialists, gays, or jews. off the record policy") you dont even need to use invasive mind control techniques. Just have your writing teams sniff their own farts.

People like murdock control huge swaths of news outlets. The corprate office issues propaganda scripts that individuals are forced to put their name on (example, by reading it aloud).