It is an interesting and valid point, but hasn't this been always the case ?
Media distort perception almost by definition, the difference is that now there are new actors and technologies, which are mostly outside of governments' influence, unlike traditional newspapers and television.
I'm not saying that it is an improvement upon the old status-quo, but let's not pretend that before it was much different.
No media organizations in history have had anything approaching the influence of Google and Facebook, unless you count state-controlled media in totalitarian countries.
> the difference is that now there are new actors and technologies, which are mostly outside of governments' influence, unlike traditional newspapers and television.
I don't see how German or U.S. news media are more under government influence than Google and Facebook.
Chomsky would strongly disagree with you - he is of the opinion that market pressures, and more importantly, access to people of power, turns mass media into an echo chamber, parroting narratives that do not diverge very far from the orthodoxy.
It's a form of soft influence - nobody needs to walk into a CNN office with a baseball bat in order to keep them on the straight-and-narrow. CNN does a good enough job policing itself.
It's an intriguing theory and worth bringing up, but it's also a conspiracy theory in that it's impossible to substantiate or disprove, which is a little too convenient.
I'm sure it happens to some degree, but perhaps Chomsky is unhappy that most people disagree with his views and attributing it to some hidden force.
> I don't see how German or U.S. news media are more under government influence than Google and Facebook.
Remember it was only a couple of decades ago that the CIA was caught mass infiltrating news networks (e.g. Armstrong, etc) and that since then a number of intelligence officials, family members and military allies have filled their board positions and editorial positions.
There’s also the ‘trade’ for access to off-the-record context and stories, suggestions for story edits by the intelligence community on everything related to national security (e.g. Dilanian), the collaboration between the intelligence community and journalists to break stories important for policy positions even if they are specifically disinformation (e.g. Judith Miller and justification to invade Iraq), broadcasting influence centered in the BBG (for instance the hundreds of advertisements in US news supporting the Iraq war that were out of the Kenneth Tomlinson led BBG), the membership of the National Security personnel on the curators of the domestic and international news wire service, and the huge amount of money from US government press centers to news organizations to report on specific items (‘free press’ means press on whatever you can get paid for), and media imbedding rules that prevent journalists from reporting freely on war (rules that we would criticize where they practiced by any other nation).
Josh Earnest, the Press Secretary for President Obama, has bragged about creating echo chambers in the domestic media.
Propaganda protections are widely overestimated in this country. When you look at the legislation and you look at the practice you begin to understand how the law is interpreted and practiced.
Yes and no. Yes, it has always been the case - but the trust we put into different information sources is different. Most people are pretty sceptical of traditional media. But I'd claim they are less sceptical of search engines - because they provide an illusion of agency and choice: You decided to research a particular topic and you "found" a number of different sources, none of which are associated with Google. That appears a lot more trustworthy than some opinion piece in a newspaper.
Perception distorts perception. The problem of media compounds the problem that individuals create their own perceptions out of a combination of incoming stimuli, prior experience and emotion. Science and philosophy (and other metaphysics like religion) all dispute the implied corollary of one objective reality, and as far as I know they also fail to prove any such happenstance.
I don't mean to deny your point, instead try to widen it out with an aim to finding a more useful general solution.
Media distort perception almost by definition, the difference is that now there are new actors and technologies, which are mostly outside of governments' influence, unlike traditional newspapers and television.
I'm not saying that it is an improvement upon the old status-quo, but let's not pretend that before it was much different.