I agree. 232 people control the news that 277 million americans are allowed to see. ([1] from 2012). Many of us have been pounding this drum for a long time, including Trump himself. I think it is this control at a national level that the Sinclair news anchors were being told to warn people about, but the NYT has flipped the narrative on them, and now they're the bad guys. Genius, but unfortunate.
One entity owning multiple outlets and therefore having the ability to broadcast a consistent message, as literally shown in the video, not only does not facilitate fake news, but can not? It acts as an antidote to fake news, in all cases?
I agree that a constitutional republic is a type of democracy, but a democracy is not a constitutional republic. Both systems are a representational form of government, but in a true democracy the majority rules. In a constitutional republic, constraints are placed upon the government which, ideally, work to protect the minority.
For example, in a pure democracy, gay marriage would not be a thing, because the majority voted against it. However, because we are a republic, and the government is compelled to recognize the minority and protect their rights, gay marriage is now legal.
I don't think this distinction is "splitting hairs," since it is of vital importance to the minority.
It's about as dangerous as Twitter spam. If people's votes are swaying based on the trash that is cable news and fake Twitter accounts, I'm not sure we had much hope for government-by-the-people to begin with.
I'm not so sure. It really could just be a symptom of the fact that it's hard to make money on local news, because people get their news elsewhere now, so costs have be be kept low. This means getting stories from news services, and automating as much as possible.
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