The modern American media may have just had their worst year yet, and for their efforts, they have announced they’d like to reward themselves more power than they have held in decades.
The past year has seen a declining trust in the media that is fully deserved. Debate moderators have been exposed as shills; network employees have been busted tipping the scales for their candidates (something this “senior media reporter” is sympathetic toward); political reporters have been caught running stories by their sources; “fact-checkers” have bent over backwards for Hillary Clinton; and major newspapers have openly cast objectivity aside — all in the name of a political candidate the media were so eager to elect, one legacy magazine shipped covers celebrating her victory before the votes were even counted.
After Donald Trump won the election, “renegade Facebook employees” reportedly formed a “task force” to crack down on the “fake news” they blame for Clinton’s sizable electoral defeat, aiming to purge social media of what someone, somewhere deems inaccurate. In a landscape where the “fact-checkers” at “PolitiFact” said Clinton wasn’t laughing at a rape victim, just laughing at getting the rapist off the hook, this should concern Americans.
A 2016 study from Pew Research found that the most popular social media service is Facebook, which reaches 67 percent of adults, two thirds of whom get news on Facebook. So, Pew reports, “the two-thirds of Facebook users who get news there, then, amount to 44 percent of the general population.” No doubt, that incredible reach comes with great responsibility.
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