[billme]

>> “ Fox and MSNBC is they are entertainment programs”

No, maybe to you, but to vast amounts of people, millions of people, they watch a singular source for news and to them, that is the news.

In the US, since you’re referring to them, the news legally used to have to allow all sides of an issues to present their views. In the 1980s, the laws changed, and that is how news became so one-side.

[artificial]

They are news entertainment not just to him, pretty much all the mainstream sources are news entertainment. They're not objective. This argument seems like calling breakfast cereal breakfast whereas it's marketed as part of a complete breakfast. The differences are subtle, like the WHO is a political organization that covers medical topics. A decent write up of the broadcast transition: https://www.medialit.org/reading-room/whatever-happened-news

[billme]

I would argue mainstream media is literally propaganda, or at least the US government is legally allowed to broadcast propaganda [1] — either directly via direct government intervention— or like what is now known to be the case in Turkey, for example, where parties buy out the media to gain favor from a given political group.

My point is that the majority of people actually watching these news outlets see it as news, not entertainment or propaganda.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America#Smith–Mundt_A...

—- EDIT: Reviewed your CML link from spring of 1990, interesting read, but really fails to do critical analysis of the specific regulatory changes by name, what impact changes had, etc. Beyond that, stating obvious, it fails to cover all the material events since 1990.

[artificial]

Ah, thanks for the clarification. I see and completely agree with your points. Everybody believing something that's wrong doesn't make it right, critical thinking is down and I believe that there's far too many distractions for people to stay on top of things (it's a full time job following politics).