re: #270 fern01

Few knew about Weinstein - yet democrats are criticized for being his friend
EVERYONE knew about trump - yet republicans elected him President

The division in the US getting so wide - flamed by the President* and vice president* every chance they get.

You’re from Oz (if I recall), so things are very different here from back home.

American mass media is not only the most powerful entity in the country, it is arguable that it is the country - mass media is the national consciousness and national culture all in one. The American people as a whole follow their media narrative without question. Trump is president because the American media, including supposedly ‘liberal’ outlets, decided that he would be promoted and Hillary Clinton attacked. Similarly, although relatively few Americans have heard about Harvey Weinstein before now, his name will be all over every network for the next several months, in order to make Democrats look bad and to normalise Trump. All outlets, including the ‘liberal ones’, will do this. If this were an election year, this would be the only thing talked about until the day of the election, so as to make Democrats look compromised. Weinstein will leave the news cycle when there is either another scandal that can be used to attack Democrats or liberals, or when there is another disaster, because fear of disasters and mass slaughter is also a strong media narrative.

It took me a while to really get to grips with how monolithic US media is, and how heavily invested it is in maintaining white male supremacy. Most of the US media were willing to do it more or less subtly until FOX decided to do it overtly and with an iron fist, and now the NYT and CNN are forced to become less subtle to keep up.