The Media, and the Role it Plays in Creating a More Divided America

The current political climate in America is not a mistake. For years following the 60s the wealthy oligarch class has been using racism, religion, and any means at their disposal to divide Americans. Their tool of choice, at least in America, is the media.

How and why did they do this though? Why would they want to divide Americans and why would they want to cause democracy to fail?

To answer that, let's quickly look at what happened in America over the past 100 years or so.

Following WW2 the govt helped create a very powerful working class. The middle class grew, wealth became something every American could attain, and liberty, freedoms, and rights grew for all Americans.

This was a problem for many of the racist whites who wanted to keep power and wealth for themselves. During the 60s, these oligarchs realized how much personal freedom the people actually attained and they became very worried. There was an immediate call for the elimination of "socialism" around the world.

The period of time following the 60s and 70s became a time for corporations in America to diverge from the laws that sought to prevent them from attaining too much wealth and power. In the 70s and 80s America went through a period of time with several Republican presidents who favored businesses over people. This was the beginning of Fox news under Rupert Murdoch.

Rupert Murdoch is a very wealthy Australian businessman who was given American citizenship by the Republican president at the time, Ronald Regan, even though he was only in America for a short time. Transforming the media landscape from a source of trusting news, to one more akin to propaganda.

Since then, both sides have been guilty of using cable news to push their ideals. Fox pushes a message from the conservative right, and MSNBC typically reports more from a liberal standpoint. However, only one side has used lies, deceit, misinformation, and fear mongering to skew their audience's views and develop deep seeded fear and hatred toward the other side, that is Fox.

As Trump lost the election during 2020, he repeated lies to the public that it was stolen. Fox news didn't miss a beat. They picked up on every lie told by Trump, and repeated it over and over until people started to believe it. Even after America watched Trump attempt to overthrow American democracy by calling his followers to DC to attack congress on the day of the certification of Biden's win over Trump, Fox still continued to push the lies.

This continued push by Fox to steer their audience where they want them by using fear, lies, and anger only entrenches their audience members more. The more shocking, and personal the lies they spread feel to people, the more they are drawn in and deeper they go.

Fox news, if you can call it that, is more like watching Jerry Springer, than the news. Tucker Carlson was the most popular star on Fox news and was suddenly fired after Fox was ordered to pay nearly a billion dollars for spreading lies about another company. Before Tucker was fired he regularly spewed hateful, racist, bigoted, xenophobic rants to his audience. At one time even telling people, "they are coming for you," when talking about black people coming for his almost all white audience.

It's no wonder that we feel like some of us live in an alternate reality, in a sense they do. It's sort of a perfect storm, the right spreads lies and misinformation, and this fuels their followers to watch even more. Each side becoming less trusting of the other, more divisive. MSNBC also seems to report information from a biased perspective, although not nearly as outrageous.

The danger to our democracy starts to become evident as the people who follow politics are no longer able to communicate with each other, and over time end up voting for more extreme candidates based on their beliefs. Because the people who follow politics in the first place are the ones who are drawn into primaries, where elected hopefuls first must win their party's nomination, the people who end up voting heavily in these primaries are the same audiences who are becoming more extreme, less willing to trust the other side, and thus the candidates elected also follow this trend.

How social media supercharges the division

Social media plays a major role in accelerating this divisive process in two major ways. The first way is the algorithms that social media platforms run on are designed for one purpose, to keep people on them and interacting for as long as possible. The other major contributor is us. Social media allows us to share information with sometimes millions of followers around the world. Let's examine each of these more thoroughly.

The algorithms have been created, tweaked, and adjusted, specifically to reduce opposing voices or opinions, such as news articles that might offer a wider range of views on a subject. In fact, after the 2016 election, Facebook intentionally made changes to their algorithm to, "promote posts from friends and family, and show far fewer posts from news outlets, which likely further contributed to filter bubbles and division," according to an article in the NY Times.

This further isolates people, and decreases their exposure to outside opinions or different points of view given that most people's friends and family tend to be similar in their beliefs. The echo chamber is amplified further by bots, and accounts that may intentionally be spreading misinformation, lies, or propaganda. Because people tend to trust information coming from people we know in real life, we can unintentionally share misinformation, and tend to believe it as real.

On top of the growing divide created by social media, the hope that we might learn more from others online if we expose ourselves to more of the opposing or dissenting side's info, hasn't proved to be the case. In fact, the exact opposite seems to happen where people become more entrenched in their beliefs, ideals, and sides. If you think about, and you're someone who is on one of theses sides, do you read something from the other side, and think, "oh yeah, maybe I'm wrong?"

Almost assuredly, the answer is no. We are much more likely to get angry, disagree, and find reasons why our side is right to begin with.

Bad for Democracy, Bad for The Working Class

All of this media influence has amplified the hostilities, disbelief, shock, and outrage each side feels towards the other. The major difference is, only one side is creating lies, misinformation, and flat out feeding propaganda to its audience. Fox, Newsmax, and the slew of other social media influencers on the right are pushing for violence, and hate against other Americans.

During the 2016 run up to the election, Trump repeatedly pushed the false narrative that the election was stolen. Fox, and the others pushed the same story to admonish and deny their side's involvement into attempting to overthrow the American government. Police officers were murdered, and one of the coup members who was helping to break in to the congressional building was killed.

Now, Trump is back in the White house and this time he's taken control of the entire government in his attempted grab at dictatorial power. He's using his power in govt to intimidate, control, abuse, and pay back anyone he feels wronged him. Media, is largely to blame for the American's support of this unconstitutional authoritarian overthrow.

Trump paid off Fox news anchors who lied and pushed his false narratives, by giving at least 13 different members of the, Jerry Springer-like show, high ranking positions in the US government. Pete Hegseth, an individual playing a news anchor type on Fox, has been put in charge of the Pentagon. So many of America's institutions that help us defend from foreign powers have been decimated by Trump since 2024.

We now have an America that's literally being ran, by members of a propaganda company that favors Russian dictator and butcher, Putin, to a democrat, for leading America. A sentiment expressed and echoed by many of their supporters. Russia and China don't have to do anything to take down America. Fox and the right wing media, have nearly succeeded in helping to destroy American democracy all on their own. They couldn't have done it without Trump though.

These are just some of the damaging and perhaps irreversible instances of how democracy is being weakened from within by media.

How can we fix our broken democracy and the division between Americans?

This is not an easy answer. As I touched on above, it's not as simple as exposing people who place themselves in these echo chambers. In fact, it almost always pushes people further into their respective sides when they are exposed to media from the opposing side.

There is no real easy answer for this. Unfortunately, throughout history, when the world begins to slide into authoritarianism, or too many people find themselves in a position of extreme poverty, the wealth gap has grown too large, or discrimination has grown beyond the point where it feel tolerable for people, either war, revolutions, or a regime change has happened.

This has become a way for society to self-adjust mistakes of the past and become better. There may be no way around it, unless Americans can come together to push out the heavy influence of dark money, corporate greed, and extreme corruption in our government, we may be headed for war of some kind.

If you are a true American, and you believe in Democracy, please consider joining our movement. Countervailing Power is a movement that wants to organize, plan, and prepare for the inevitable challenges ahead with the Trump Regime.

We believe he is not going to leave the White House peacefully. We do not intend on doing anything other than making sure WE the people do not allow this. We have to plan, organize, and begin to elect new leaders like the new mayoral candidate Zorhan Mamdani.

People who refuse to allow the corporations, the wealthy orligarchs, and foreign nations influence our country. We are a non-profit, and we only seek to create a democratized movement that can count on each other, and begin to rebuild the govt so it works for the people again.

Here is a link to join. Tell your friends and family.