This is a convoluted question, but I'd be interested to hear any thoughts you have off the dome. 1) I understand that the corporate news media are fully captured by capitalist interests and the national security state. Major news outlets are not going to call for de-militarizing the globe, overthrowing the system, and redistributing the wealth. 2) Meanwhile, political scientist and inveterate pessimist Jodi Dean argues that politics happens on two registers: The first is merely a circulation of discourse and communication that creates the illusion of participatory democracy. (In her mind, we would all be stuck on this level, posting and browsing twitter, etc.). The second is the actual policy that the US government follows, which doesn't give a damn about what people in the first register say. One of her examples is the largest antiwar protest ever amassed (in the lead up to the 2003 Iraq War), which had zero impact on Bush's actions. Given all this: Would you say that the news media don't have the capacity to destroy powerful people's careers and change anything for the better? One, because they're in thrall to capital and the power elite, and two, because they're outside the register of official politics anyway? And if this is the case, do powerful individuals simply know all this, never fearing consequences from bad press? (I guess that would be class consciousness at work).

  • ssjmarx [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    The smart ones don't, but they're rarer than they used to be due in part to the internet being able to break literally anyone's brain no matter how insulated they are in real life.

    I think that since Vietnam the US' deep state has pioneered one of the most sophisticated media control apparatus' in the world, and it only grows better with each passing news story. The entire profession of journalism has gone from actually researching things to lazily repeating the ad copy you get handed, and the best you can currently get from any news outlet is good analysis from the independent journalists - but even they are still just reading the ad copy and speculating between the lines, which is extremely limited compared to what nailed Nixon or Iran-Contra or Abu Ghraib.

    But this is nothing compared to just how the narrative gets controlled even when something happens that was unplanned - Edward Snowden stirred up a storm of controversy when he became a whistle blower, but rather than focusing the discussion on what the NSA was and still is doing to everybody we focused the discussion on Snowden himself. Same thing eventually happened with Assange, Manning, etc - the control apparatus knows that it can't literally control every single person, so its adapted flexible tactics that can nullify the effect those people have with ease.

    But all that said, the dumb ones definitely do. IMO Elon Musk's obsession with Twitter is primarily driven by the fact that it became the top choice of media people, and he both greatly fears them and wants them to care about him.