| No. They are propaganda outlets, and must not be considered separately from the Republican Party. The current mechanism is 1) Fringe theory gestates in the internet. 2) Fringe theory gets into the podcast network and is covered 3) Relatively famous personality comes on a Fox program and mentions the theory 4) Government figures repeats theory that was covered on the news 5) Fox repeats government coverage People on the right who have alternative theories, simply do not get air time. They aren’t suppressed, they are simply not competitive. In a more economic framing of their efforts - they have found a way to offset the costs of inaccurate content to the future. So they are now able to “sell” cheap “junk food” content, while the center and left spends more effort in forming more accurate content. The center and left publications, for all their flaws, still stick to journalistic norms. But today the NYT is more a site dependent on its wordle revenue than its subscription revenue. Consolidation of markets means advertisers do not need smaller local newspapers, and platforms get the lions share of attention. There is no business model to sustain a free information economy. |
Up until about 2016 I would have agreed to this. After the last month or two, I don't see how a rational human can think this anymore. Neither side has any mainstream news outlet which tries to be honest in its reporting. You want facts? The talking heads have their own YouTube channels now. If you can find a decent selection of them, they provide more honest reporting and far better analysis than the media on either side provides currently.