The richest guy on the 2021 Forbes 400 owns the Washington Post. Number 2 now owns Twitter. Number 3 owns Facebook. Numbers 5 and 6 started Google. Numbers 4 and 9 started Microsoft. Number 10 owns Bloomberg. Free speech? You decide.
Combine this w/the Citizens United formula that money equals speech & so those w/the most money are entitled to the most speech, lack of campaign finance regulation & pols who depend on $ to hold power & you've got a country sinking ever deeper into the quicksand of corruption.
So, if you're just an average American who thinks somehow Musk or some other billionaire is going to enhance the voice of the little guy on the Internet, you are a hopeless sucker who's not paying attention.
And if you think that the trend toward control of public forums by billionaires is not linked to growing inequality and will not produce more of it, more division, more reshaping the narrative to suit those holding the purse strings, you deserve what's coming.
That said, the rest of us don't. We deserve better. And the place that starts is to set basic rules for public forums as we have in media for years--from truth in advertising to libel laws to the late lamented Fairness Doctrine.
Clearly, one of the great looming public policy challenges is going to be creating next generation regulations that protect society from hate, division, disinformation and corruption. Musk's purchase of Twitter only makes that more urgently needed.
To conclude, the right v. left politics of the media is just a distraction that draws attention away from the rich vs. poor and especially the super-rich vs. everyone else dynamic that really drives our politics.
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