I grew up watching ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.

[Uncle Joe]

25. The way I see it. The decline in network news began in the aftermath of

Walter Cronkite coming out against the war in Vietnam.

It was a stupid and unjust war but the oligarchic powers that be decided that conscientious jouralism shouldn't stop us from waging war justified or not in the future.

So they used a multiprong attack.

1. In the years afterward, the news media was primarily blamed for stupid and ill thought out political/policy decisions. "Rambo" exemplified this mentality with his machine gun that never ran out of bullets as he sprinted through the swamps of Vietnam like he was at a track meet. "We wouldn't have lost Vietnam without the news media" meme took hold, not so much that we should never have been there in the 1st place.

2. Requiring that the news should be a network's money maker.

3. Eliminating the Fairness Doctrine coupled with continuous consolidation, and thus being owned or controlled by ever fewer hands.

Rupert Murdoch became the 1st corporate media oligarch just barely pretending to even call Fox "news." Nothing but blatant propaganda just appealing to the people's emotions over their reason. They were successful at it too, so the other corporate conglomerate networks followed suit only to a lesser degree.

As the democracy enhancing Internet and information revolution took hold today's oligarchs; are taking note, they want to control it just as they do with the one way, top down mildly hypnotic mass communication tech of T.V. so as to put everyone back to sleep, that's why they hate "woke," that's why Musk bought Twitter, and that's the way it is.

Thanks for the thread Tommy Carcetti