[stelonix]

I believe it's disingenuous to pass it off as "well it's just semantics" when, in reality since the 80s neolib explosion and after the 2010s Snowden revelations, it's pretty clear the relationship between Washington and corporations/the press is as intermingled as the Chinese and their equivalents.

[woodruffw]

Again: it’s hard to take this seriously. The Chinese government has direct control over all domestic news; in even the strongest sense, the US government exercises influence over mainstream domestic news.

Both are bad, but equating between the two doesn’t do anybody any particular service: they have different proximate causes, and different remediations.

[stelonix]

If you find it hard to take it seriously, I find it even more to take you seriously. What you're saying only makes sense if there's no such thing as coercion and deception, 2 things we know are practiced by Washington. A small, meaningless semantic meaning of hierarchy, when you have secret courts and plain, obvious examples of government & corporate media working together, it's like you're asking us to believe in fairy tales. And it's all backed by "we wouldn't lie, they would", which is xenophobia, quite simply.

You'd have to ignore Snowden and all the leaks of the past 20 to 50 years, to have such a misconception of how the USG operates. You'd have to have the USG's trustworthiness as the pillar of your belief system and then comes the usual philosophy. That's exceptionalism and xenophobia.

[George83728]

You've brought up Snowden twice but I'm unfamiliar anything Snowden revealed about the relationship between the Washington Post and the government. Can you expand on this point, ideally with some specifics?

Usually when people talk about the CIA being involved with American media, it's in relation to things like Operation Mockingbird, but as far as I know Snowden didn't reveal anything about programs like that. Snowden revealed things like the existence of PRISM, and the Washington Post (along with The Guardian) was one of the first newspapers to publish such revelations.

[alookatsbg]

I would take a peek at Sinclair Broadcast Group. Just one of the CIA cronies out there.