cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/542681
Even without strong state intervention or state censorship bourgeois democracies manage to convince countless of working people to vote, behave and think against their objektive interest. How so? Editorial boards and directors only hire journalists and creators whose opinions they like, leading to journalists being allowed to say what they like because the board likes what they say. Even if a journalist has a change of heart, their article will likely get removed from mainstream editions. On top of that market machinations prevent the publishing of actually critical content that looks at the root of issues instead of just feeding into capitalists (sur)realism since that wouldn’t bring profits or would upset the shareholder/oversight board. (Now you might say that the left-wing content might sell well among the public, but who controls the flow of (investment) capital and thus dictates what is viable at a large scale and what isn’t?)
I don’t think I’ll ever understand how everybody can generally agree that mainstream media is largely corporate owned, influences its reporting to maintain their power, wealth, and influence, and maintains the status quo, yet people arrive to the conclusion that mainstream media is biased against right wing conservatism.
Thought experiment: What would corporate media biased toward right wing conservatism look like? What would corporate media biased toward left wing progressivism look like? What do most corporate media outlets more closely resemble?
In general, they prioritize their profit above all else because their corporations in a capitalist economy. They only report as much truth and fact as required to maintain some amount of legitimacy and avoid fines and lawsuits; otherwise they do and say whatever it takes to maximize viewers, clicks, engagement, and advertisers. Sounds like their agenda is to make as much money as possible without risking turbulence which could cause swings in company valuation. Keep things as they were, nice and stable, while growing their own wealth and power? Sounds like right wing conservatism to me.
I don’t have a similar chart bookmarked for US media, but here’s a great (and kind of disturbing) chart for ownership of all major Canadian newspapers, along with whom they’ve endorsed for PM going back decades. Kind of telling that they’re almost all simps for Conservatives. And almost all owned by Post Media.
manufactured consent and cognitive dissonance, my friend