> 6. Controlled Mass Media The best kind of control is when the object being controlled does the controlling themselves voluntarily. In political media, that h

> 6. Controlled Mass Media The best kind of control is when the object being controlled does the controlling themselves voluntarily. In political media, that happened a long time ago when reporters started being more concerned about "access" than reporting facts and asking politicians hard questions. The fear of "losing access" to politicians means unsubstantiated claims are rarely challenged and scandals are ignored or re-framed to not sound as offensive. This process was amplified when CNN (and others) started pretending every story had two sides that needed equal coverage or the story would be "biased". Now any claim can gain legitimacy and unchallenged air time, with the media acting as if their claim is equally probable. So politicians (and anyone else that wants to push propaganda) can now make any claim they want, knowing that it will go unchallenged. Even if someone argues against their propaganda, the media will present the propaganda anyway. (and for a look at where this will evolve into, see HyperNormalisation's description of Putin's (and to some degree, Trump's) strategy of "confuse everybody by generating as many conflicting stories as possible")