I feel the multiple senses of "propaganda" are doing a lot of work in this argument. American culture has always been heavy on groupthink. (Full passage under "Power exercised by the majority in America upon opinion.") As soon as mass media was invented, Americans demanded it cater to their tastes regardless of the facts. For example, in the 1890s they were hyper-nationalist jingoists, so they only bought newspapers that told them terrible things about the Spanish. And individual actors like William Randolph Hearst might steer these passions in a certain direction.
This is "propaganda" after a fashion. But it's not the same propaganda as a clique of oligarchs or a small political faction pulling the strings of the whole media landscape to distract or confuse the country.
Legacy media sucks now because it used to be very profitable but isn't anymore. Today, the only reason to own a newspaper is to control the narrative. So today, that is the only master newspapers serve. I do believe they once served other ones.
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Notes -
I feel the multiple senses of "propaganda" are doing a lot of work in this argument. American culture has always been heavy on groupthink. (Full passage under "Power exercised by the majority in America upon opinion.") As soon as mass media was invented, Americans demanded it cater to their tastes regardless of the facts. For example, in the 1890s they were hyper-nationalist jingoists, so they only bought newspapers that told them terrible things about the Spanish. And individual actors like William Randolph Hearst might steer these passions in a certain direction.
This is "propaganda" after a fashion. But it's not the same propaganda as a clique of oligarchs or a small political faction pulling the strings of the whole media landscape to distract or confuse the country.
Legacy media sucks now because it used to be very profitable but isn't anymore. Today, the only reason to own a newspaper is to control the narrative. So today, that is the only master newspapers serve. I do believe they once served other ones.
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