Will Bunch expresses what I’ve been thinking since Trump was elected. American democracy is under attack from within. The fascists who yearn for an authoritarian government in the media are promoting it, and the media who supposedly don’t support it fail to recognize it. They are busy trying to follow the political playbook of the 20th century.
NPR = “Nice Polite Republicans”.
Among the left, it’s always been a running joke that outlets like PBS (Petroleum Broadcast System) and NPR are somehow agents of liberalism.
I seem to recall NPR’s own ombudsman said they rely too much on corporate/conservative sources. They are not nearly as “liberal” as the unhinged right wing declares they are.
This all goes back to Reagan. He’s the one who really popularized the term “liberal media”. In labeling the media supposedly liberal (which it really wasn’t), it made that same media shift to the right because they naively didn’t want to be thought of as being biased. Well you keep doing that for some 50 years and even mass media outlets are right of center these days, and that doesn’t even include the really right wing outlets like Fox.
Then there is also the whole issue of media consolidation and corporate media. So you have fewer media outlets and those outlets are richer and more controlled by corporate interests. Corporations by default will lean to the right. So they will tend to naturally paint stories with a pro business, anti worker lean.
It’s all a big mess these days, so when I see these stories when people deep within the industry bemoan Trump, I can only help but consider these people as part of the problem.