A majority of Americans say this is the biggest threat to democracy

[Belsnickel]

(10-24-2022, 05:23 AM)Rotobeast Wrote: Operation Mockingbird...

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I get so tired of hearing about that. I have some QAnon folks in my family and they reference that all the time. They refer to anything they deem to be "fake news" these day as Operation Mockingbird. It's apparently a common thing in that community.

To the thread topic in general: The truth of the matter when it comes to the media is that it is a for-profit operation. The majority of media is fueled by advertisers and run by corporations. Neither of these groups have any sincere interest in making sure that what the people receive is accurate and comprehensive information that impacts their lives. They push the stories they want pushed with the viewpoint they want them to be presented in. This has been going on for decades.

Between that, the oversimplification of the information pushed out by these outlets, and blurring of the lines between news and entertainment, and many other smaller impact things it should be no surprise that people are feeling this way about the media.

I would point out, though, that this poll didn't say that people though media was the biggest threat to democracy. That is a misrepresentation of the polling information that is honestly akin to the critiques lumped onto the media. The polling questions asked whether they saw certain things as a threat to democracy. An important differentiation. Media certainly scored the highest, but unsurprisingly a majority also saw Trump as a threat to democracy.

The biggest thing to keep in mind is that what the average person sees as a threat to democracy doesn't legitimize the idea that it is. I would agree that the current state of our media landscape is a threat to our democracy, I've made that abundantly clear over the years as people have relied more and more on media that is becoming extremist in their views and/or are too embedded with the political machines as they work to please their corporate overlords raking in the money from the masses as they sell us as their product to advertisers.

I do, however, tend to see other things as large threats to democracy like wanting to not count every vote from an eligible citizen, or removing eligible citizens from the voting roles, or making it more difficult for eligible citizens to vote. Those are direct attacks against democracy as opposed to the indirect ones mounted from the media. The problem is that the indirect attacks are so outrageous and attention grabbing (and often times covering up or excusing them) these direct attacks are going ignored.

There are people in this country right now that are directly attacking our democratic principles, but most people pay it no mind.