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> you cannot blame people. Do you blame Russians/Soviets and Chinese when their media are state organs that set agendas and promulgate state positions? > Yes,

> you cannot blame people. Do you blame Russians/Soviets and Chinese when their media are state organs that set agendas and promulgate state positions? > Yes, blame the media --all of them they all have abandoned principles of neutrality in favor of ideology and partisanship. It wasn't so during Clinton or Bush's time (not that any of the two were any good). I'm not sure if the comparison holds. I think a big difference between the US and China, is that in China there's much less of a positive feedback loop between people's attitudes and media coverage. If the people want and would eat up, say, liberal criticism of the Communist government, they're not going to get it from the Chinese media. So in the US you probably can lay some of the blame on the people: if they start to favor more "ideology and partisanship" over "neutrality," that could cause the media to give them what they want, which then could cause them to want even more "ideology and partisanship." That positive feedback loop then gets you to where we are today, and it's both "the people" and "the media" who are responsible.

mc32 4y ago
I do agree there is a feedback loop with some economic but also political alignment. However, while I agree that the media to some degree is giving people "what they want", the media can stop it (including social media and journalistic media) --they have that power. As you noted in China, the media do restrain themselves from amplifying things they want to suppress and feed their audience the political line of the day. It's not people setting the tone of journalism and media in China, it's the media that is doing that.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > It's not people setting the tone of journalism and media in China, it's the media that is doing that. Except in China it's not the media itself setting the tone, it's the authorities who give it commands that it has no choice but to obey. Who gives the American media its commands? Its customers, the people. But it's different because the media also has the choice not to obey, which spreads the responsibility for the outcome between both groups, instead of concentrating it in one or the other.

mc32 4y ago

I do agree there is a feedback loop with some economic but also political alignment. However, while I agree that the media to some degree is giving people "what they want", the media can stop it (including social media and journalistic media) --they have that power. As you noted in China, the media do restrain themselves from amplifying things they want to suppress and feed their audience the political line of the day. It's not people setting the tone of journalism and media in China, it's the media that is doing that.

tablespoon 4y ago
> It's not people setting the tone of journalism and media in China, it's the media that is doing that. Except in China it's not the media itself setting the tone, it's the authorities who give it commands that it has no choice but to obey. Who gives the American media its commands? Its customers, the people. But it's different because the media also has the choice not to obey, which spreads the responsibility for the outcome between both groups, instead of concentrating it in one or the other.