It needs to be said that much of the naked propaganda spewing from our formerly credible “news” organizations may well literally be paid for.
Jeff Bezos, obviously, OWNS–lock, stock and barrel–the Washington Post. But I have also read that Bill Gates buys shelf space too. Why should we not assume China, and even North Korea, Iran, and everyone from the Australians, to the Ghanaians, to Indians, to Malaysians and anyone else with cash, is not paying for “news” to their liking?
Why should we not assume Gannett’s context is dictated by money, and not even the political biases we likely naively assume direct the bad reporting and censorship of most news organizations?
Maybe we have the cart and horse backwards. Maybe the people who pay for everything only ALLOW the hiring of people ready and willing to say what they want them to say. Maybe it is not that journalists as a group have a left wing lunatic bias, but that only such people who have such a bias can be hired IN THE FIRST PLACE.
And for that matter, we assume as a matter of course that Academia is Left Wing out of habit, because they lack useful life skills and thus want to create a world where words alone create beneficial outcomes.
But Universities run on money too, don’t they? Their endowments come from rich people, and from corporations. Why not assume that the string pullers–who get their power from money–are not consciously STEERING most universities in that direction?
Here is the thing: an omnipotent, ubiquitous government is in the INTERESTS of the power elite. It is absolutely inconsequential–and perhaps even comically ironical–if they use the rhetoric of opposing large corporations in service of empowering them; or if they use the rhetoric of freedom to secure actual tyranny; or, obviously, if they use the rhetorics of compassion and tolerance and inclusion to secure the ENDS of cruelty, malice, radical intolerance, and radical exclusion to the point of concentration camps and even mass murder.
Words need not match reality. This point is only not obvious to people so disconnected with effective action that words are all they have. Words conjure ideas and ideas conjure action, but for anyone who lives ONLY to speak words, the outcome is always the words and ideas. What happens to living, breathing human beings is fully invisible to them.