[quote=zk]A fine article from the new York times on the alternate universe that viewers of right – wing media inhabit.
How can you have an effective democracy if the truth doesn’t matter? You can’t. Right wing media have made truth not matter.
Honestly, I think I’m ahead of the curve on this one. I don’t see a lot of agreement with my sentiment that right-wing media are destroying our country. I see significant agreement that they’re full of shit. But not much agreement that they’re destroying our country. I think that at some point, possibly before long, there will be more agreement on that.
Unfortunately, I think that agreement will only be among those who haven’t fallen for it, and that that won’t help much.
If you look at the ratings for the various news programs in prime time the numbers are just too low to have that much influence. Fox news has the best ratings but that translates to an average of about 4 million viewers in prime time. That’s like 1% of the population. I don’t spend much time watching news anymore. I find out information from various sources on the internet and will occasionally end up at a major news outlet article via a link but I’m not bookmarking Huff Post or New York times or fox news as my go to source for information.
The revenue difficulties a lot of news sources are having would seem to suggest I’m not the only one that’s doing this. Therefore how much of the population is really being brainwashed by right wing media. Seems like less than 10% and most of that 10% is really just seeking out confirmation bias. They think liberals are full of it so they seek out people that agree with that belief.
Take something that was big news during the election cycle. The Clinton email scandal and then think about where did you first find out about that scandal. Everybody knew about it but they probably didn’t learn about it because they flipped on Fox news or read the original new York Time piece. They picked up up from social media or a conversation with a friend. What did people primarily take away from that story? That Hilary Clinton was full of shit. Some choose to support her anyway because everybody does it or she’s better than the alternative, but nobody thinks she wasn’t lying. Fox news slanted their coverage one way Huff Post slanted it another way but in the end fox news wasn’t really responsible for formulating peoples opinions about that story. People arrived at their conclusion via other means not because their we’re brainwashed by the media.
