TV personalities — ones you might not have expected — have begun to notice the way mainstream media now drop the ball on news coverage. The usually apolitical TV psychologist Dr. Phil, for example, was recently holding forth to podcaster Joe Rogan on their inability to report honestly on many sensitive political subjects. Medical doctor Drew Pinsky, who has offered relationship advice in a number of media venues, is saying similar things. News about every cultural flashpoint now seems to be managed in the way that facts about COVID-19 were at the height of the pandemic scare.

Why fight censorship if you can just censor yourself?

An inevitable outcome of the strategic lack of curiosity among journalists is a marked reduction in the traditional media fervor against censorship. As Michigan State law prof Adam Caneub, a freedom of speech expert, noted in 2022, “one has to get the feeling that institutions that traditionally have been pro-free speech have retreated from that. There could be political or cultural reasons.”

Indeed there are. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Media have always had their biases in coverage, to be sure. But the newly massive lack of curiosity needs to be seen against a background of declining circulation, plummeting public trust, and failing publications. Just last week, for example, Vice, a once-popular progressive outlet, recently announced mass layoffs.

Life is more comfortable with a secure government job …

The mainstream media response to their declining significance in the internet age has been to slowly try to become part of the government — to front the government’s story to the public — allowing the public only a muted, curated response.

Along these lines, in Canada and Australia, government-directed funding schemes that require Silicon Valley to fund the MSM, enable them to stay in business. A similar funding scheme is being suggested among key demographics for the United States. It’s the proposed Journalism Competition and Preservation Act of 2023, which narrowly missed adoption then but is sure to be back.

Briefly, the JCPA would establish a media lobby, backed by government, that extracts payouts from Valley social media companies that are then divvied up among mainstream media, giving the MSM a guaranteed stream of income — whether anyone reads or heeds them.

Of course, the mainstream media who receive the payouts can be expected to be hostile to the remaining independent news sources that offer information that is inconvenient to government.

What news sources are left out under the proposed new system?

The Foundation for Freedom Online warns,

It’s instructive to consider who’s left out of these laws. Media lobbyists have argued that social media profits from their content and the traffic it generates. But social media companies profit far more from the billions of users who casually produce content on their platforms every day, as well as the vast decentralized ecosystem of professional and semi-professional creators: newsletter authors, streamers, independent Rumble or YouTube channels and a variety of other forms.

Not only are these creators totally left out of laws like the JCPA, but they are also offered no safeguards against arbitrary demonetization and censorship by tech platforms, payment processors, and advertisers. The bottom line of these laws is protectionism: maximum benefits for the traditional media, and zero for the independent creators who compete with it.

Allum Bokhari, “Protection Racket: Why The Censorship Industry Needs to Bail Out The Media,” Foundation for Freedom Online, February 5, 2024

Eliminating competition…

The newly cozy relationship between mainstream media and government will also mean regulatory capture. Campus free-speech warrior Greg Lukianoff explains what that means:

Regulatory capture is the relationship between a regulated industry and the government, which takes place when the industry experts (who achieved their expertise through management of entrenched corporate interests) go to spend time working in the agency charged with the regulation of that industry. Unsurprisingly, all of the things they thought were good for their corporate alma mater, they think are good for the industry. Wacky coincidence! Among other adverse effects, regulatory capture inevitably prioritizes imposing expensive regulatory barriers to entry in the market.

Greg Lukianoff, “A Tale of Two Congressional Hearings (and several AI poems),” The Eternally Radical Idea, February 6, 2024

In short, mainstream media will be government agencies in all but name. Between their efforts and the efforts of the civil servants and academics who currently seek to control the news stream, the average news consumer may face a much bigger challenge in the near future in getting independent news on topics of interest. Stay tuned.

Next: How’s the JCPA model of news management/control working in Canada?

You may also wish to read: So who are today’s disinformation police? Social scientists are striving to develop ways to blunt the force of information that governments would rather the public did not know or heed. The disinformation experts claim to be defending democracy — and yet their principal weapon is indoctrination.