Gallup’s latest finding in America is thus showing the U.S. portion of what is, actually, a global problem, which extends beyond merely the media, and beyond merely the United States. The super-rich keep getting richer and richer, while the rest of the population either stays the same or else gets even poorer and angrier than they were before. Increasingly, around the world, publics are coming to see the ‘news’ as being shaped by the owners of, and advertisers in, the ‘news’media.Although Zuesse ends up on a positive view of this Gallup report, positive to those who are aware that an information attack is ongoing by the capitalist class against ordinary people, I am not so impressed. The first finding that discouraged me was this from the report.
Remarkably, the partisan breakdown of the 69% who thought this to be “a major problem” isn’t what one would expect if one equates “Republicans” with “conservatives,” and Democrats with non-“conservatives”: whereas 76% of Republicans said “major problem” here, only 61% of Democrats did. (72% of Independents did.) Republicans dissented from capitalism, on this question, even more than did Democrats. On this crucial issue, Republicans are more progressive than Democrats are; Democrats are the most conservative (and pro-capitalist) of the three groups.Likewise, I was not encouraged by this finding:
Distrust of the news media has soared in recent decades; so that, whereas “In 1989, 25% of U.S. adults said there was a great deal of political bias in news coverage; now, 45% do.”Our ruling masters in the capitalist classes have many ways to infiltrate our minds with their self-serving propaganda and/or distract us from the real issues. They have fallback methods that they employ if their management of news and information fails. This is readily apparent in the explosion of online alt-right and alt-lite websites stirring up conflicts among various segments of the population and inciting hatred towards each other. This can be seen as a counterpart to the more direct violence that has been created by them directed at various nations known as the Salvador Syndrome or chaos strategy. Then if all else fails, they are increasingly moving toward censorship of websites. Our capitalist masters can track success by using their well established methods of 24/7 surveillance of the internet including collaborating social websites.
