When this treatment of the issues and events that affects us all is presented on a persistent and continuing basis, it must be seen for what it is, and that is propaganda.
I'm sure that very few people are surprised to see media using propaganda techniques, although they might be surprised by some of the more subtle techniques in use. They can't reasonably be surprised to find that media organizations use their pulpit to advance the interests of their owners, who, in the case of mass media, are uniformly corporate, often transnational corporate, and decidedly too few in number.
As for a solution to this narrow aspect of the problem affecting a sharply contentious political environment, I recommend that media ownership rules be rolled beck to pre-Reagan standards, where no media organizations were allowed to dominate any particular medium, and were not allowed to own more than one form of medium in any single market. This is the key to diversified ownership and diversified opinion being represented.
Further, we should return to the days when editorial balance was properly regarded to be an oxymoron. While standards of neutrality are desirable in straight news reporting, there has never been such a thing as fair and balanced editorializing, as evidenced by the days when there could be a half dozen competing newspapers in the same market, each with an openly biased editorial position. It is high time to drop the pretense that such a thing as a fair and balanced editorial position is possible, never mind extant.
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