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It's less overt, but I've come to believe the US has the same thing going on. Consider two things... first Fox News just fired O'Reilly, who is the highest rat
by Consultant32452 10y ago
It's less overt, but I've come to believe the US has the same thing going on. Consider two things... first Fox News just fired O'Reilly, who is the highest rated news man in the country (probably the world). Why? Not because he was a sexist pig. They knew that for years. They did it because the advertisers started pulling out. Now consider that every 4 years the major political parties spend over $1 Billion in advertising. And that's just for the Presidential election.
That comes with a lot of power to tell the news media mega corps what they should be talking about.
- darawk 10y agoJust to play devils advocate for a moment (since I kind of agree with you), aren't the politicians fairly captive to the media as well, though? It's not like they can vengefully decide to stop advertising with them.
- Consultant32452 10y agoConsider further that there's only 6 media companies in the country and they're all huge mega-conglomerates with billions of dollars in government contracts on the line. A person in a position of political power can easily nudge a contract to a competitor if you don't play ball, costing you millions in a single contract. I mean sure, the government needs things from the media too. We saw CNN give Hillary the secret debate questions during the primary. Rather than going public with this atrocity Clinton just fucking used the information. Literally one person from CNN got fired, but she's got a job at the DNC now so it's totes cool. I think it's safe to assume that this sort of thing is far more common than we'd like to admit.