15-16 Billion was spent this cycle according to public data. They talk about the donors a lot. But they hardly tell anyone the biggest beneficiary is the Media.<p>This year we also had the EU, Indian, UK and French elections and the total cost was less than 2 Billion.<p>So the big underlying question is what are Americans even getting out of all that spending? Better quality journos? Better quality politicians? Or just better spin doctors, consultants, fund raisers, talking heads?
"major news outlets have twisted themselves into knots trying to appease critics on the right."<p>And yet somehow there is no mention there of Biden's diminished mental capacity until after it was too late.<p>Could it be that the major news outlets were twisting themselves into knots to appease the right, or that they actually weren't.<p>For example, The dramatic edits on the CBS 60 minutes interview with Harris would seem to indicate that they actually were trying to do something else
WaPo not posting the editorial was a silly move, of trying to please a volatile creature.<p>But what really gets me is the NYT. Man, they bent over backwards to normalize & sane-wash the craziest shit. Michael Tae Sweeney just turned it into his hole bit, but boy was he ever right: <i>"the media covers Trump like this because they want him to win."</i><p>We have colossal problems with absolutely deranged things going on in the far right media & online streams/radio, blending conspiracy and disinformation together, just gleefully outdoing each other for hotter own the libs takes. We keep saying low information voters, but it's only true sometimes; it's just as much people being fed the wildest craziest shit. And rather than actually report some of the wild shit going on straight from the presidents mouth, like the NYT could do, it's all re-parsed into, oh, hahaha old man Trump is at it again with his somewhat divisive talk!<p>For a while on Bluesky there was a Trump headline translator, where people would put real or imagined whores in one side, and the NYT headline on the other. Too too many were real examples of absolutely crazy making-palpable bending-over-backwards efforts to help out. It just feels like there's no one at all to report accurately.
I think this is a bad take. The press mostly do their jobs, I see lots of opinion which they could reduce, but most of the time it’s on point, at least in the mainstream news, and sometimes even fox. it’s not their fault if Americans are giving in and listening to foreign propaganda from Russia and the CCP, these easily fooled people will have to get burned like they’re getting ready to get burned in the next 4 years, to return to the fold. They’re essentially still children when it comes to threats like promoted bluecheck bots funded by foreign actors like the aforementioned ones on twitter and reddit.