"By more than 4-1 Americans say US media more of a threat to clean elections than Russian hackers"
Argumentum ad populum
Something approaching two billion people believe there is no God. That a lot of people believe something to be so has no bearing on whether it is so and whether their belief reflects or issues from an existential truth.
In a democracy, it matters.
It matters in some ways, but one way in which it does not is that of establishing whether what people see as the cause of "something" is indeed the cause. I suspect that folks, many folks, can find a correlation between the press and compromised elections, but correlation does not equal causation. Additionally, one would need some sort of germanely objective measurement basis to credibly and cogently accept to the notion that the press' role is more detrimental than that of Russian hackers.
I'm not sure I agree there is no causation. If democracy depends for its success on public debate in the "marketplace of ideas" and
if the media is how we debate, then the loss of public trust in the media will have far-reaching consequences--perhaps fatal to the democracy itself.
This election has been a game-changer, and I doubt we are ever going back. Look how monolithic the media coverage of this race has been. Everyone in the MSM was (and is) singing from the same hymnal, and the hymnal isn't even a real hymnal, it's the degraded world-view and fevered hatreds of the vile George Soros. Under such circumstances, the election couldn't be anything but compromised. Is it any wonder Americans hold the press in such contempt? CNN sucks! CNN sucks! And they really do.
Red:
The only people debating via the media are the people who contribute content to the media. For everyone else, the media is how one obtains information about things, events and people.
About the photo:
Well, someone has to own and or be the CEO of media outlets. If it weren't the pictured men owning/managing what they do, it'd just be other individuals. Let's be real here. There are two choices about who controls media outlets: private individuals or the state. The U.S. government also owns and controls a media outlet, and that one is enough.
Other:
As goes the news programs that are available, my suggestion is that one watch CNN, MSNBC, and Fox for entertainment's sake. PBS Newshour is far better for obtaining a comprehensive telling of news. At least it seems that way to me. The three major cable news channels have far too much editorializing for my taste; I don't even care what stance they take...Watching those programs/networks, one'd think there are only a tiny handful of things going on in the world.
I happen to see news and information as being of two major parts: general information about the world in which we live and how it works -- how humans work, how nature works, how money works, etc. -- and specific information about events that occur. I think that far too few people have a very good understanding of the general information and I think far too many people focus on specific event information while lacking the general information foundation needed to make complete sense of "what's what" re: those specific events. The result of that is that far too many people rely upon the news to "bring them up to speed" on the general stuff on an as needed basis when it's germane to do so based on an event that happened.
Well, for better or worse, like or not, that's not what news organizations see as their role. And since news outlets, media, is privately owned, the owners get to decide for themselves what their role is and how they want to exercise it. The fact that media owners and managers have that type of discretion is precisely why each of us must be very well informed as goes that general information. And how does one obtain the general info to which I refer? So far, the only good way I know of is to read a lot of the stuff one can find
here and that often never appears
here.
