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I don't watch the news, but I recently found myself in a situation where I had to watch MS NOW (apparently what MSNBC became). My God, it was rough and bleak. It seems like it's trying to be the leftist answer to Fox News. Maybe it is. I'd always assumed leftist news carried a veil of credibility that conservative news didn't. Maybe it used to. But this particular network, at this particular moment, felt so pundit-driven that it was actively turning me against whatever they would say.
They'd mention something associated with Trump, like his family making money while he's president, then play a clip of him talking about it. And yeah, he sounds like Trump, a tactless braggart. But he also sounded reasonable, especially since I could tell the clip had been edited in the least charitable way possible. They'd have Chris Hayes, who's clearly trying to be the leftist version of Bill O'Reilly or Tucker Carlson, addressing the camera directly, smirking, telling the audience what to think about it.
Or in a roundtable discussion they'd mention the rising number of Democratic Socialist candidates in the party and, in a strikingly angry tone, insist it's naive and lazy to think this means the party is being "taken over."
It was just insinuation after insinuation, delivered with this anger and dismissiveness. It wasn't news reporting. It was punditry. They were never just reporting anything; they were stating opinions while implying no reasonable person could disagree. The goal, it seemed, was to deepen partisanship: build an echo chamber for the already-onboard, and shame anyone who isn't into submission.
Like I said, I've never been the biggest news person, so I don't know if this is a new thing for the left, or an old thing, or just this network, or every network.
They all do this. ABC and NBC news are just the same. You, the viewer, are a dull child, prone to evil thoughts, and you must be brow-beaten and relentlessly propagandized so you know which is the Good Guy Anti-Bad Guy Club and which is the Bad Guy Club.
To play Devil's advocate a bit... isn't there a place for this in any realistic democracy? The average voter isn't an expert in economics, or international relations, or constitutional law. Yet we're still expected to vote on all of these things. The only way this system works is if someone else interprets and simplifies the key issues for us, and maybe that requires a funny pundit more than a technical expert.
In any realistic democracy the average voter is one of the best educated in his nation on these matters and this isn't a problem.
Universal suffrage can only lead to subversion precisely because the average man has neither the time nor the inclination necessary and has to seek the mediation of demagogues.
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