The other thing that is growing is the conflation of opposition to Israel’s belligerence and human rights violations with antisemitism.

There are vastly more Semitic people than Zionists. In fact most Zionists aren’t Semitic whatsoever.

Post truth world. Sad stuff.

No it’s not, antisemitism is not equal to criticism of Israel.

Well no, the difference is that this merger is in favor with the current administration which has engaged in a broad and pervasive pattern of authoritarian behaviors while being in lock-step with Israel's interests.

This merger is only happening because the deal that the seller actually preferred (Netflix buying them) was unlikely to be approved by regulators. The President literally came out right after the deal was approved and said "it could be a problem" and "I would have a say" in whether it went through.

In fact the very existence of Paramount Skydance itself, as a merged entity, appears to have been contingent upon Paramount modifying its own HR policies, placing a government ombudsman at their marquee journalistic outlet (CBS), and paying $16 million to Trump's "presidential library fund."

More importantly he's a zionist and put bari Weiss in charge. It's pretty clear what they want to do.

> view true left-of-centre perspectives from mainstream media outlets

Do you think this is being prevented somehow? There are many left leaning news agencies [1]. Maybe the "problem" is that they're all for profit, most of which comes from ads, most of which are anti union companies.

What's the alternative? Mandated reporting?

[1] https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/media-literacy/2021/sh...

It's the right wing perma-victim complex.

"We'll tell you the truth about the Dominion voting machines, which mainstream media WON'T tell you!" - Fox News, knowingly lying while also being literally the largest broadcast network in the country.

Bezos with the WaPo was this until 2024.

I'm not saying new should be entirely left and right. My point is that the adversarial system will find more flaws than a more neutral system. There's plenty of time, and all sorts of in-between agencies, to point out the neutral stuffs. My point is that the existence of even super politically aligned news agencies isn't some pure bad thing, or a sign of a dictatorship. We need both. All the news agencies being aligned one way would be a VERY BAD thing. All the news agencies being aligned to some "center" would be only slightly less bad.

CNN nudging more towards the right doesn't somehow influence the overall left leaning spread [1], or is in any way indicative of a rising dictatorship.

[1] https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/media-literacy/2021/sh...

It sure feels like there are people who care about formulating and holding principles (e.g. "adultery is bad") that ought to apply to everyone, and then there are people who pretend to do the same but all the "principles" are just reflections of some ultimate virtue of loyalty/obedience, towards some hierarchy they consider existentially important.

The first group will define good/bad acts and then judge people by what acts they commit. The other will defines good/bad people, and then judge acts by which person is doing them. If you want investigative journalism, clearly group #1 is preferable.

On a similar note, I highly recommend a playlist of long-form videos from ~2016, titled (in the sense of an expose) "The Alt-Right Playbook". In particular, the video "Always a Bigger Fish" [0] tries to make sense of some persistent "how can they possibly believe X but not Y" disagreements when it comes to democracy and egalitarianism.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agzNANfNlTs&list=PLJA_jUddXv...

WaPo, NYT, The Atlantic, NPR, and many others.

I think it is amusing that people try to peg each news outlet as "left" or "right" as if they are an 18-year-old who votes whilst standing on a seesaw.

First, political views are not one-dimensional and so the "left"/"right" and far-extreme-ultra game is just "are they on my side or are they considered bonkers by my brethren?" games.

I believe that it's far better to consider news outlets as a product of their sponsors vs. their intended audience. By and large, they are all corporations trying to maximize revenue by attracting and maintaining a large audience for their materials, thereby paying their sponsors and advertisers the revenue they need.

So, they will produce stories that engage the audience. Whether that is enraging us, stoking controversy, appealing to us with smooth words: doesn't matter. There's no such thing as bad engagement. The corollary is that they don't want to lose audience members so any slide into supporting unpopular causes or candidates or ideologies is nipped in the bud.

Folks also can't seem to accept that editorial opinions or ideologies can shift, especially for example, if a news outlet supports "whoever/whatever is currently in power this year" or as a contrarian, opposes them, and riles up the opposition parties.

Wikipedia's relentless blacklisting and deprecation of "unreliable sources" is a great public experiment in this regard. If you really want a nice left-leaning anodyne view of the world, go with Wikipedia and "blacklist" or stop paying attention to any source they don't like.

Yes, all of them, minus the ones you can count on one hand that's missing a few fingers from a fireworks mishap.