It used to be that the press understood their job as a check on the powerful but those days are well behind us. The corporatization of the media is a big reason for the change. Moreover, the press used to expose government malfeasance especially the workings of the national security state and those politicians and officials involved in it but now they view their job as narrative management rather than reporting “news”.

With economic conditions deteriorating rapidly after decades of rampant financialization and corporatization the social contract is, to all intents and purposes, worthless. Even the World Economic Forum admits that corporations, its main constituency, have turbocharged inequality. Populism is on the rise just about everywhere and angry and fragmented protest movements have been growing since at least 2019.

As a result there’s an information war being waged as the US and other so-called liberal democracies as they attempt to gain much greater, more detailed control over the information being shared on the internet. And in the endeavor they have the corporate media as partners in crime.

There are plenty of examples of corporate media enlistment in the new propaganda/censorship crusade but their treatment of the Nord Stream bombing offers up a fine example of their servility to power.

The Nord Stream bombing was immediately blamed on the Russia, but any sort of honest appraisal would have asked the basic question of qui bono? Instead the corporate media immediately and uncritically repeated this preposterous charge. In that the corporate media’s behavior has exposed that when it comes to truly serious issues, especially involving geopolitics, Western mainstream media no longer investigate, criticize, or expose Western elites. Instead, they help them spread lies and distractions, while blaming geopolitical opponents and helping mobilize Western populations for the fight against them. In short, Western media now behave as just another weapon in the Western arsenal, forming, in effect, the information war branch of its hybrid warfare.

 Numerous details in their reporting on the bombing–TV and in print–do not add up. But that is not even the most suspicious part. What is especially strange is that they do not come up with these inconsistencies and contradictions themselves. Instead, they are simply reproducing official narratives with a total lack of criticism and alertness.

Then there’s the corporate media’s role in covering up Israeli atrocities in Gaza. Our political class is still totally down with the genocide as demonstrated by Netanyahu’s 58 standing ovations in Congress, but the corporate media propaganda barrage in support of Israel has been pushed to its limit, perhaps severely overtaxing that vital tool. Many tens of millions of Americans, especially younger ones, have become fully aware of the total disconnect between the mainstream media portrayal of events in Gaza and what they have been seeing with their own eyes on TikTok, Twitter, and other relatively uncensored social media platforms. The resulting collapse in media trust among young Americans may permanently cripple the powerful pro-Israel media network that has dominated American society since forever.

Anyone who’s been paying attention is aware of the total disconnect between corporate media and reality. Meanwhile, most intelligent observers have now quietly recognized that our media has been totally dishonest and unreliable on any matters pertaining to Israel, and once they begin to consider that this may also have been equally true in the past, the implications are enormous. The Matrix is probably the best depiction of the reaction to waking up in a simulation.

The biggest takeaway is that important, controversial events of our history that might have previously been disregarded or ignored are now suddenly reconsidered in a very different light. The upshot is that the corporate media simply pass along, reinforce, and pleasantly embellish official narratives. All of this–just like the neoliberal hellscape that out elite have constructed–has a price. For one thing, mainstream journalists who turn themselves into information warriors, whatever their motives, mightily contribute to the decline of their own credibility.

An eco-system of propaganda does not restore trust. It erodes it.