Mostly the lesson over time has been that people don’t want to agree about anything with their rivals until absolutely forced to. The content of the argument is less important than the medium of argument.
Network TV didn’t create a realm of common facts exactly but a single forcing factor that compelled resolution because the system could not sustain a lot of competing ideas.
Of course this meant that better ideas would survive, and that very often meant good ideas that worked in reality—-though not always.
Now you have to show an idea is better by implementing it at a smaller scale and growing it rather than winning all at once at a national level.
It’s all doable but it is harder and takes longer. It is possibly lower risk and more dynamic.
