TL;DR: Capitalism sucks.

So that was a bit of a depressive read. Can’t say I’m really surprised as I grew up in the 70’s and was around to see how Ruhr in Germany spew out enough sulfur to poison the lakes even in the Nordics.

The ruthless effectiveness of the suppression of any opposition is what gets me about all this and that is the major difference about how the debate was back then. I’m not saying that the perpetrators were any better back then, it’s that they get away with methods and arguments that simply wouldn’t fly in the 70’s. The press would have had a field day taking down someone trying to lie or suppress to the extent they get away with today. More often anyway, not saying it was perfect in any way shape or form, but the press had more freedom and was actually feared because they could make a difference and was much freer to do so. The reliance on ad money instead of subscribers is a large part of what killed the free press. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Media owners do and did obviously play a large part on what stories and spin they allow, but if the spin was too blatant, competing media would be oh so happy to point that out and shame them for it. This does not happen today because all media that counts is owned by a small click of people with the same interests and goals.

Any left leaning media have had a much tougher time switching to a mainly ad based revenue streams because the ones buying ads have an interest in keeping the status quo and why would they buy ads in media that works against their interests? There are basically no left leaning mainstream media outlets left, even in the paradise on earth that is the EU, and for a smaller outfit it is basically impossible to get a dissenting view heard.

*This comes from a European perspective, where the difference is more pronounced between then and now, but the difference is there for US media too, albeit to a lesser degree. There were still large outlets with a bit of a backbone willing to run a story that was embarrassing to or was contrary to the wishes of powerful people back then. Not so today but for slightly different reasons in the US.

*By left in this post I mean European left, not the hard right Democrats that the US define as left.