Thread by @mattsheffield

Thread: The biggest power that right-wing media has over its audiences is what it doesn't tell them about.

It's a very deliberate strategy that is frequently used to control what the GOP voter knows about.

While there are many true extremists who vote Republican, many of the party's voters are low-information people who actually think that Democrats are more extreme.

This position is nonsensical given that Democrats never sent a mob to kill the vice president. But...

If you are just a regular Republican who thinks the media are hopelessly liberally biased, you know almost nothing about 1/6. You don't know that it was filled with violent gang members, that many people had weapons, and that many have been charged with sedition.

You certainly don't know that literally every single one of the right-wing conspiracy theories about supposed voter fraud in 2020 have been totally debunked, or that the Trump campaign people didn't believe them either.

Right wing media never, ever talks about this stuff. Instead, what they talk about endlessly is how the Democrats are woke transsexual socialist communist fascists.

They also deliberately never talk about GOP controversies.

As I noted earlier, right-wing media suppressed the story of Kevin McCarthy's admitting the obvious truth that Trump's people were the ones who led a mob to march on the Capitol.

https://twitter.com/mattsheffield/status/1517634512636633088

They're doing the same thing now with Marge Greene's bigoted and ludicrous attacks on the Roman Catholic Church being supposedly under the control of Satan. This story is literally what everyone in GOP circles is talking about privately. But it's suppressed in right-wing media.

Fox News, Breitbart, Townhall, and Daily Wire, have all suppressed the Greene story entirely.

These same outlets, who constantly suppress stories about Republicans, also frequently turn around & accuse the mainstream media of suppressing stories, such as the Hunter Biden laptop story.

They ignore all the legit reasons why no one touched that one:

https://twitter.com/mattsheffield/status/1509550071976669184

There are times when I believe the MSM has had a centrist Democratic bias, but it's light years removed from the constant bias that right-wing media exhibit daily. It was a huge reason why I stopped working in right wing media after creating two of its most popular sites.

Another example: On Monday, @pbump reported that Fox anchor Sean Hannity asked Trump's then-chief of staff Mark Meadows for instructions on Election Day 2020 and dutifully replied "Yes sir On it" after receiving them washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/…

Hannity, who advised Trump on a daily basis and almost never disclosed the fact to viewers, is far from the only right-wing media figure with hidden conflicts of interest. Almost all of their outlets have staggering conflicts which they never disclose.

For instance, the Daily Wire was literally created in 2015 by Ted Cruz's top donors to flood the right-wing ecosystem with propaganda in support of his presidential run. They never disclosed it:

https://twitter.com/mattsheffield/status/1481157707881086976

Many right-wing media outlets are also directly owned by churches or religious organizations seeking to steer Republican opinion in their direction:
🟥Epoch Times, Falun Gong
🟥Washington Times, Moonie cult
🟥AFR Radio, evangelical ministry
🟥Townhall, evangelical B2B

Many other rw media websites are directly owned or affiliated with political action committees who will "report" on candidates or legislation they lobby or spend on. Almost never do they disclose this information. Here's a handy list from @TheRighting therighting.com/media-guide

People in the mainstream press have talked endlessly about how there are "two different worlds" in politics. This is how the right-wing panopticon was built and how it keeps people in line to support Trump's every action and word.

Meanwhile, there are almost no advocacy media organizations on the political left to counterbalance the thousands of websites, radio, television, and web shows that exist on the right.

This is also deliberate. Democratic donors are dominated by antiquated consultants.

Democratic consultants have become obsessed with voter registration and finding new voters. They don't care much at all about staying in touch with or learning from people who are occasional voters.

Right-wing media does this for the GOP and it's profitable.

It's a lamentable fact that Democratic politics is utterly and totally dominated by a small cadre of extremely rich consultants who learned their trade in the 1980s and 90s. They think that placing an op-ed somewhere or making a video ad is a great triumph.

Right-wing media is the "secret sauce" that binds the entire GOP coalition together.

Democratic consultants think it's just a bunch of nonsense. Which it is. But it's so much worse.

Please share this thread & support me if you can. Someone needs to tell the truth. /end

Bonus: Check out this RedState article about @Acosta interviewing Marge Greene. Notice two things:

1) He deliberately doesn't quote from the Greene text saying that GOPers wanted martial law to stop Biden.

2) He deliberately censors her Catholic bigotry web.archive.org/web/2022042823…

PS: Don't take my word for it. This effect has been empirically tested. Fox viewers who watched CNN actually were made aware of information that they'd have totally missed otherwise theguardian.com/media/2022/apr…

This political bubble is patterned after a similar campaign that convinced millions of Christians that being a far-right Republican is the only way to be a good Christian.

Join me today at 11am PT/2pm ET to discuss w/@MalyndaHale facebook.com/34685597981465…

Thanks to those who joined @MalyndaHale and I live. You can watch the replay below.

Make sure to follow her, she's great! twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1…

Looks like this thread is really angering people who work in the disinformation factory of Fox. I just got this reply from their homepage editor.

And of course, he has no argument, just rage at being exposed. I could destroy any of their hosts in a debate and he knows it.