3 ms·
Yellow Journalism has been around since the 1890s, and to a degree journalism has always been about propaganda - it's hard to spread your opinion without a prin
by throwaway346434 2y ago
Yellow Journalism has been around since the 1890s, and to a degree journalism has always been about propaganda - it's hard to spread your opinion without a printing press, and by the time the poor can get their hands on them, the upper classes/wealthy/capital holders have had access to this level of automation for some time/captured huge chunks of the market.
In a way, it is a bit of an oddity that there has been trust in journalism in recent decades - some individual acts like publishing whistleblower accounts or corruption have lead to an outsized perception of it being for the public good.
Meanwhile, we have seen again and again - particularly in Murdoch owned properties - that the interests of commercial media do not align with what we consider the common good; ie
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News_controversies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News_controversies
Yet we do nothing about it in particular (Australia and the US).
Then we end up back here, wondering why groups in the electorate have wildly different perceptions
- exceptione 2y agoYou are hitting the nail right on the head. > have lead to an outsized perception of it being for the public good. Exactly! > Yet we do nothing about it in particular (Australia and the US). Right. First step: getting the public to know what the role of the Fourth Estate is in a democracy. Second step: getting the public to know that they currently live in absurd infotainment landscape, getting them to understand how their media works. Third step: getting the public to understand the importance of democracy. Fourth step: holding media outlets accountable for misinformation. The big danger for those in the know is that they get cynical. Then you have recreated the Soviet/Putin ecosystem, and the oligarchs have free reign. America is inching far closer to that, but in the mind of Americans "this can't happen here".