Thread by @Dreamweasel

Unfortunately, we’re already split in two; just not by geography
news.yahoo.com/majority-trump…

The “nations” which exist in our minds are defined entirely by the perspectives through which we see the world.

One adheres mostly to observable facts; the other, an agenda-driven simulation in which Donald Trump is always right & everyone who contradicts him is a liar.

One nation acknowledges that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, and the Coronavirus is a very real threat best avoided by wearing masks, social distancing, and taking CDC-approved vaccines.

The other nation thinks every word of what I just said is a mainstream media conspiracy.

I was reading a Matt Taibbi column earlier which asserted that news coverage was becoming like religion, and claimed that both sides were equally culpable.
taibbi.substack.com/p/the-news-is-…

But I think there’s a fundamental difference in how mainstream media genuinely attempts to present the facts (even if they sometimes get things wrong), and how conservative media distorts everything in the service of a preferred narrative.

Non-political coverage of the election or the pandemic is TREATED AS political by the agenda-driven Right if the conclusions do not fit their narrative. There’s not the same level of quasi-religious fervor to demonize the “Other” on both sides. Not in mainstream coverage, anyway.

I’m not sure “The news is now religion” is quite the insightful take it may appear to be at first glance. Religion & politics have always been touchy subjects of conversation; the main difference being today that virtually all news stories are colored by politics in some way.

It’s been said that the first thing a cult does is try to convince you that everyone else is lying to you.

This is a key facet of conservative media, from Limbaugh through Fox News through the MAGA outlets of today.

This is how the Right “politicizes” mainstream news outlets by default, where the absence of an agenda equals an agenda.

It’s how strait-laced election results became a mainstream media conspiracy.

It’s how Dr. Fauci and the CDC became tools of the Deep State.

Taibbi cites examples to support his claims of an agenda-driven MSM: the apparent glee with which they report anti-vaxxers dying of COVID, & their hands-off approach to Hunter Biden scandals.

I’d think the former category is more relevant to the public interest than the latter.

I’ve thought about this a lot when people speculate as to how “History” will remember this era. And the truth is, there is no one “History” anymore.

Both versions of the truth will very likely be embraced by different subsets of our descendants.

In short: I reject Taibbi’s assertion that the mainstream media has become more political. Rather, a more accurate description of what is happening is that it is being TREATED as political by those who with a vested interest in rejecting the mainstream as “just one opinion.”