Right. That something is private is by itself meaningless. This is a major problem in the West that many don't seem to understand, that the lines between the pr

Right. That something is private is by itself meaningless. This is a major problem in the West that many don't seem to understand, that the lines between the private and public sector are worthless and blurred if the private sector is powerful enough to function as a de facto arm of the government. Raw power is what counts. In terms of the media, CNN, MSNBC, NYTimes, WaPo, Fox, etc, are all de facto regime media outlets (Google and Facebook fall broadly into the same camp because they control the flow of information). The same oligarchic milieu that influences or runs the government influences or runs the media. They all go to the same schools, live in the same neighborhoods, go to the same parties, etc, etc. You don't need a Legion of Doom to orchestrate anything or any planning. Common interests and a similar lust for power causes a coincidental synthesis of mutually constructive arrangements that the same group finds beneficial. It happens naturally, as it were. Another threat is foreign ownership of media. In Poland, where public media is explicitly controlled by whatever ruling party happens to be in power, there was recently a big media circus around introducing some media investment restrictions by foreign companies. Over 80% of Polish media are foreign owned, much of it in German hands, but not only. Best of all, it's not presented as representing the interests of those countries or groups. That's a huge problem for national security and a symptom of the neocolonial control the country is under (Piketty once described Poland as "foreign-owned"). Recent media brouhaha was triggered by an American media company (owned by Discovery). It's one thing to read about another POV. It's another to have foreign interests presented as your own and concealing their true nature. The Western media meanwhile routinely convince the Western public that anything against Western oligarchic interest in that region is fascist and other favorite epithets. They groom the public to view what's happening in a way that is untrue and benefits oligarchs. Colonialism still exists. We just call it other things now. Also, divisiveness is not the primary problem, but downstream. If we focus on division, we risk throwing truth under the bus, especially in this climate of subjectivist "narratives". We are vulnerable to saying "to heal divisions, we must accept a common narrative". Heh, sorry, nope. That's the tyranny of the lie and the narrative makers (hence the foaming at the mouth by those who are losing control of the "official narrative"). The only thing worth uniting around is something true and something capable and worthy enough to function as a unifier. You need enough in common to create a workable society where coexistence and cooperation are possible. If we can't find something like that, then sorry, but you have no viable society.