"Change the money, change the world" is a popular phrase in our circles but "Change the media, change the culture" is just as important IMHO.
It's amazing how many people have their opinions formed by the mainstream media without giving it a second thought. Worse still, they believe they came to their own conclusions by themselves.
Mainstream media (corporate media) often repackages articles from consulting companies, only slapping on a journalist's byline
They do but it's way bigger than that. There's an official narrative you get from MSM and you can venture outside the framework of that.
What are we changing the culture to?
Is that a royal 'we'? Do you think the MSM portrays an accurate and balanced representation of society and events?
Great question.
Does such a thing exist?
I'm not defending the mainstream media. I think news-as-entertainment is pretty deleterious to a healthy policy, for a bunch of reasons. But I'm also not sure the relationship is one-directional. I think people are getting what they want in large part, which makes it hard to disentangle things.
*polity not policy. Damned autocorrect.
Yeah true. That's why we have political fraction and division so prevalent today. We tend to only consume what reinforces our preexisting beliefs. I still think the news media and entertainment media push specific agendas. The latter more subliminally.
It's pretty clear to me that the press is pretty motivated by consumer preferences. I think people over-estimate how much nefarious agendas are at play, under-estimate how much commercial media are essentially just echo chambers for hire. Cable news in particular.
To wit, if CNN had a true left-wing agenda, it wouldn't be giving Trump the platform they are. They're doing it because it raises rating and brings in advertising dollars. They're selling a product. That product is continuous moral outrage. Which is also what Fox News is selling. I think this is a problem with human nature more than anything. Which I get is very cynical. But I think it's unfortunately true.
Itās also the new owner of CNN WBros is headed by a protrump billionaire. š° talks and sells propagandaā¦
I disagree on how much they're motivated by their consumers but agree with your point about there not being a nefarious agenda. I don't think there's an evil cabal trying to manipulate the masses but I do think there are specific agendas which can't be deviated from.
CNN getting Trump on was purely for viewers but CNN anchors (Cooper et al) weren't happy about it. CNN has its own left-wing agenda undoubtedly. As does Fox with a right-wing agenda. I'm not in the US but even I can see that. Trump was guaranteed to pull in viewers and last I saw CNN viewership numbers are in the gutter.
Before the internet, mass media controlled the narrative so there was less need for moral outrage but the media was used to swing public opinion on various events. E.g. Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
It's not just news media either. It's corporates in the form of public relations.
Yeah. I don't think they care about the outrage as long as the ratings are up. I really don't.
You think their real agenda is not about pushing a political message at all but getting their ratings up?
Basically. I mean, people have choices. I also think it's pretty strange that when people say "mainstream media", they tend to exclude things like Fox News, even though it is quite literally the most watched news network in the US.
I have a far more cynical view of these things than most other people. I think humans are looking for dopamine hits and to confirm their biases. And there's a lot of people selling that as a product.
I think Iād prefer it if they were in the business of selling dopamine hits over them pushing an agenda for political purposes. That way, perhaps we arenāt as divided as it seems. And going back to my initial note, if we can change the media we can change the culture.
My question remains: what is the culture we're aiming for? š¤·š»āāļø
Donāt know. It shouldnāt be for any one person to decide. One thingās for certain, at least from my perspective, it doesnāt seem to be getting better which I think is mostly the mediaās fault.
I agree it's not getting better. We disagree on how confidently we can apportion blame.
š¤ out of interest, who do you think is to āblameā for a decking culture?
Media is financed by FIAT, so fix the money fix the world/media is still valid. FIAT is the root of almost all the nonsense we face today imo.
I agree but at the same time, the internet fully broke mediaās business model and they havenāt yet found a new one. Floundering around in fiat outrage farming isnāt helping them find it for sure.
Agree. Consuming non-MSM has opened my eyes to it and provided the opportunity to learn different perspectives/versions of events.
I'm not sure it is. I'm unsure a non-fiat world would guarantee a fix for it. You can still have all the same media in a non-fiat world
