America’s Right-Wing Propaganda Problem Might Be Terminal

The headline led me to expect a different spin on the problem, so I clicked on it already starting to assemble the response I intended to make, only to discover that the actual point of the article was the same one I was going to make.

Yes - this is not some sort of odd happenstance or unforeseen consequence of something else. It's a very deliberately engineered strategy - part of a muti-pronged strategy by the wealthy and empowered few to protect and expand their wholly destructive privilege in the face of the entirely justified opposition of the masses the exploitation of whom fund that privilege.

Or to put it much more succinctly, the privileged few - the wealthy and powerful - are parasites, and a parasite's survival relies in great part on keeping the host oblivious to the harm they're doing, and modern media has been shaped to serve that exact purpose.

And yes - it's likely terminal, if for no other reason than because too much power is held by too few people, and a significant number of those people are, by any reasonable standard, profoundly mentally ill, such that they'll destroy the civilization on which they're parasites before giving up any shred of their privilege.

One of the first things Reagan did as President was to start getting rid of the Fairness Doctrine.

The movie 'Network' went from being a cutting edge satire to a quaint docu-drama in real time.

For decades, academics warned anybody who’d listen

it sure sounds american; but it's the entire western world and guess them waking up now is better late than never.

It's full of good points, but I want to comment on one in particular which I think probably encapsulates the article's premise:

As a result, corporatist media has lost the trust of the public thanks to feckless, ad-engagement-chasing “view from nowhere” journalism. This is journalism that prioritizes clicks, access, and the interests of the ownership class, while a right-wing disinformation machine, built over the last 45 years, convinces impressionable Americans to celebrate their self-immolation.

This is true. But it's also too narrow a focus: re-building competent news would be a huge step forward, but only one; the real issue is a larger point which, again academics have been telling anyone who would listen; our understanding of the world via media is incredibly dangerous because it is tightly controlled.

It's not the news per se that needs rebuilding, it's the understanding of how media works that needs . . well, building. We need to recognize how a point of view is communicated in print, on video, over text, etc., and why it works that way. We need to understand why product placement is such an abomination, why authentic culture can't truly be bought and why we live in a shit swamp of our own making.

Any step towards that goal requires media itself to report this information and that's where it gets murdered every time. Advertising, corporate news, republiQans, and "the church" all will lose if it becomes known, so they all fight it every day in all the ways.