Friday wrote:It's a complicated subject, for sure.The problem is in our culture, people don't believe that The Libs are child-devouring demons because the media TOLD them to, they believe it because they WANT to and the media ALLOWED them to.
See this? I agree with this, but I also don't agree with this.
The Media absolutely feeds into people's worst fears, and in that sense it "follows" culture. But it also CREATES fears. And in that sense it "leads" culture. You posit that if all news was Absolute Objective Unbiased Truth, that the problems would continue unabated, but I don't believe that.
The news DOES have an effect on people. Cleaning it up WOULD affect how people view reality. And no, you don't have to get to Absolute Objective Unbiased Truth to see that effect.
But you're also not wrong that even in a world where the media instantly explodes if it tells a lie that misinformation would continue to spread through illicit channels. Or that it can't be fixed in isolation. So many fucking problems are like that. But management of the symptoms isn't a waste of time, even in isolation.
It's a feedback loop.
Fox News, for example, feeds grievances that already exist.
But it's also radicalized people in a way the media of 40 years ago didn't. All you have to do is look at the difference between the Nixon impeachment process and the Trump impeachment process to see that.
It's not that bigotry would go away if there weren't huge moneyed interests intentionally stoking it. But I don't think we'd be at the same kind of crisis point that we are if it weren't for Fox News and other cogs in the propaganda machine.