The Root Cause of Why This Country is Divided

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   peoplepower73posted 2 years ago

   Here is my take on why this country is divided and there is so much vitriol and hate on both sides. Everybody is looking at the symptoms of where we are today, but not the root cause.  I’m old enough to remember Walter Cronkite and his News Hour.  It was not called a show because it was the pure, unadulterated, unbiased news.  There was also the Huntly Brinkley Report.  Huntly took one side of the political spectrum while Brinkley took the other side.  They were held to that standard because there was a Fairness Doctrine that governed how the news was to be presented fairly from both sides.
   
   All was fine until Reagan came along and removed the Fairness Doctrine. Now there were no longer any boundaries.  Then Ted Turner started CNN as a left leaning news organization with a 24-hour news cycle.  Make no mistake this was done to sell commercial time 24/7.
   
   Rupert Murdoch, an oligarch, media giant from Australia and the UK appeared on the scene because he wanted a piece of the action.  He liked the New York Post with its tabloid format, so he bought it.   He then bought 20th Century Fox and Fox News was born.  He modeled the format the same as the New York Post which is a tabloid format easy to read and understand. He hired Roger Ailes as his CEO of Fox News and Roger brought in the right leaning talking heads and the short, skirted ladies sitting on couches with more than a little leg showing.  Under Roger’s tutelage, Fox viewership rose above all other news outlets and the money earned from commercials flowed all the way to the top of the Murdoch Empire. He coined the saying Fair and Balanced when it is anything but that. It is a right-wing propaganda machine in my view, just as the MSM is a left-wing propaganda machine. All one has to do is switch between Fox News and an MSM channel to see the difference in their agendas.
   
   When Donald Trump appeared on the scene to run as president, Rupert called him an idiot, but then he saw how he was attracting people from the right and he gave him a berth on Fox News, mainly with Hannity’s show. He was given a spot like a megaphone to sell his wares while accusing the Mainstream Media Networks (MSM) of Fake News.  Trump on 60 minutes, said he did this as a means of protecting his lies and if attacked and questioned he could always say the MSM is fake news. Until this day, he is still doing that with all the communications channels that he has available to him via rallies and presenting himself as an authoritarian to his base and while saying the MSM is fake news.  They seem to love Fox News because of its tabloid, easy to understand format and Trump because he plays to his base’s fantasies, and they truly believe that the MSM is fake news.
   
   So, in summary our country is divided because of five men, Ronald Reagan, Ted Turner, Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes, and Donald Trump, all in the name of selling commercial time to support their agenda and/or increase their own profits.
   
   Ronald Reagan removed the Fairness Doctrine.
   
   Ted Turner created the left leaning 24-hour news cycle that all the big news outlets now use.
   
   Rupert Murdoch for creating Fox News, a right-wing outlet
   
   Roger Ailes for creating the entertainment model for Fox News with all the talking heads and cutie ladies.
   
   Donald Trump for increasing the viewership at Fox News and playing to his base with all the conspiracy theories and lies that they believe.
   
   And now we choose one side over the other all based on big news mogul’s selling commercial time to sponsors.  We are the pawns in this game, but I think it is too late to change. It is now embedded in our psyche based on our values and beliefs that have been established since the start of the 24/7 news cycles as the money continues to flow upwards to the owners of the news shows.

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      wildernessposted 2 years agoin reply to this

      The moon may fall and hell may freeze over, but I agree with you.  The media is a huge force in the divisions of our country.

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         Ken Burgessposted 2 years agoin reply to this

         The media is indeed part of the larger whole problem.
         
         The twisting of this fact so that it can be blamed on Murdoch and Reagan is laughable.
         
         The lack of understanding of where we are currently, with powerful forces behind the scenes, such as the Intelligence Community (NSA, CIA, FBI) the powerful corporations and banking institutions and institutes like:
         
         https://www.weforum.org/partners#search
         
         https://en.unesco.org/strategic-planning/UN
         
         The ignorance in which arguments are made today, by some highly intelligent people no less, is quite astounding. 
         
         These individuals will dig into the nitty gritty of events from 30 years ago that seemingly prove their point that this Republican policy or this Democratic policy is bad.
         
         While ignoring the very open, unhidden truth in front of them.
         
         Read up on Agenda 2030, Global Compact on Migration, read up on Unesco and the World Economic Forum, see who the partners are who the members are and what their goals are.
         
         Then, I promise you, the insanity, the divisiveness in the country, in the MSM, in our politics will all make sense.
         
         Those inside the DC belt, those that are part of the "elite" are not working for Americans or their best interests.

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      GA Andersonposted 2 years agoin reply to this

      That detailed preface for your conclusion that it is the media's fault, (your '5 men' point), shows the thought you put into it.
      
      I agree with you that it is the media's fault, and those that control the media, (the editors), and up the chain of management to the owners you named, and the moneyed interests that motivate the owners.
      
      Reagan was none of those. I agree with his 'Fairness Doctrine' action. Why you think it is, would be a tangent to your topic. ;-)
      
      GA

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         peoplepower73posted 2 years agoin reply to this

         GA:  Removing the Fairness Doctrine was the key to the division of Newscasting. It required that all news outlets provide equal time to both sides. Reagan wanted it removed so that he could give the opportunity to conservative to create right wing only news shows.  Hence, Fox News was born.
         
         Once it was removed, Fox News only presented the right wing agenda and the MSM only presented the left wing agenda.  The crawl strip that you see at the bottom of news show screens is supposed to suffice for equal time. That's how they get around it with the FCC.

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      abwilliamsposted 2 years agoin reply to this

      I disagree.
      You've mentioned these particular five men because they didn't/don't, toe the line for the Democratic Party.
      They are much too smart and savvy....to be owned by anyone or anything,  in particular,  a political party. They aren't sellouts, they aren't zombie followers, they are powerful, confident, successful, men, comfortable in who they are and, sadly, they are a dying breed!
      
      The root cause of our problems is evil in all its wicked and various forms.

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         MizBejabbersposted 2 years agoin reply to this

         No, they aren't followers. They *own* their own billionaire viewpoints. They can be compared with the monopolists of the late 1800s. Thankfully, like those men, they are dying out.

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      peoplepower73posted 2 years agoin reply to this

      This is how Rupert Murdoch works.  When you are no longer useful to bringing in money to his empire, he will dump you.  He has no loyalty to anybody.  It's all about increasing viewership to sell commercial time and having the bucks flow upward to his empire.
      
      https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics … 2742a61ef8

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         MizBejabbersposted 2 years agoin reply to this

         When I was working on my MA in journalism back in the early 90s, the word on the street was "the left wing media was causing all the problems." There was a perception that all major media was owned by liberals. However, one shrewd professor went into the ownership of the major media corporations, and she brought out the fact that at that time, most of them were owned by conservatives who wanted to make a dollar by pushing whatever view made them money. Some of us were surprised to learn that Rupert Murdoch was an ultra conservative. His newspaper holdings of that era were considered liberal. His true leanings came out with his Fox News.

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      MizBejabbersposted 2 years agoin reply to this

      I mostly agree with you on this assessment. But as a broadcaster who worked under the Fairness Doctrine, I have to say that it was in practice one of the most ambiguous rulings the F.C.C. ever issued. The idea may have been sound, but the execution took years to clarify, and that may have been one of the reasons that Reagan was able to get rid of it.
      When it first came out, broadcasters were not sure what equal time meant. People were demanding to be heard just because of an innocent newscast. For instance, if a Politician A was involved in an automobile accident that made the news, his opponent thought he could demand an equal three minutes to spout his views simply because Politician A was shown being taken to the hospital in an ambulance. Sounds silly, but that kind of logic did go on behind the scenes until the FCC finally made some clarifications. It did have a chilling effect on the news. Today I can see where that would be a good thing.

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