All Media Will Be Forced to Choose
Are you part of the pro-democracy movement, or will you accommodate authoritarianism?
1. Techdirt
We can learn a lot about what’s wrong with our democracy by examining how the media has split into into three fairly distinct spheres.
There’s the state media—Fox, Newsmax, the Federalist, HughHewitt.com—which have become pure propaganda outlets.
There’s the “neutral” media—the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC News, CBS News, CNN—which believe that politics should be covered as a sport with reports about who’s up and who’s down. Extraordinary efforts are made by these institutions to present both sides of every question, even if it means presenting the case for illiberalism or platforming people who the media orgs know are lying to their audience.
Finally, there’s pro-democracy media—outlets which understand that America is experiencing an ongoing authoritarian attempt and that they must stand on the side of small-l liberalism.
But this segmentation is not sustainable. Three spheres will soon collapse into just two: Media orgs that oppose authoritarianism and media orgs that accept it.