In France, there is a powerful left-wing politician named Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
He was senator for decades. He was previously a minister. He has run for President multiple times. People close him describe him as a political beast.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Luc_Mélenchon
On october 3th 2023, the newspaper Le Monde published an absolutely astonishing investigation into his girlfriend. They reveal that his girlfriend SCREAMS and HUMILIATES ordinary people. And he knows that.
3 days later, on october 6th 2023, Melenchon took a trip to Morocco.
Believing he was far away for any camera, he made a cynical confession to moroccan university students:
“I really don’t care what newspapers reveal. The vast majority of voters don’t read newspapers. They watch online videos”
"We are now in the great era of social media"
Elon Musk regularly attacks the New York Times.
On social media, he urges people to not read it.
That’s because the New York Times has published incredible stories about him.
Elon Musk knowingly lied about the safety of self-driving vehicles. Multiple people were killed
Musk is sexually harassing SpaceX engineers
The Musk Foundation is breaking the law:
When powerful politicians and businessmen tell you “don’t read newspapers”, they aren’t trying to give you good life advice.
It’s a manipulation attempt.
My issue with this is that it seems to imply that the elites don’t want us engaging with any media at all (probably partially true- an uneducated/apathetic population is easier to govern). However, it seems that you assume that the media itself has integrity, which I would argue is flat out not the case, except for maybe one or two outliers like AGNB/Channel 5 (and even he has bias and some skeletons in the closet).
I would argue that this collective loss of media integrity, in America at least, goes back to at least the 1880’s, and the point of no return could marked to a few years before 1974, when Christine Chubbuck killed herself on live TV in protest of sensationalism in the press.
This does not mean that going the way of the ostrich is the right way, however. It just means that I think we can get a better result out of honing our powers of discernment and logic so we can figure out what exactly we believe, and then carve the bullshit off whatever the media is trying to feed us so we can figure out what’s actually going on. Or, even better, not even seek out the information, but allow the information to come to us, where we can apply these same tools and get a good answer.