This is more about the rising belief that there is a massive conspiracy by them (the liberals, the Jews, the military industrial complex, the star chamber, take your pick) to systematically distort news in a coordinated way so as to realize their plans for world domination / genocide / fascism / destroying the family (circle one).
Eg keeping people bickering about racial issues instead of agreeing on the aspects of policing which need reform, or from focusing on class issues.
The tens of thousands of reporters, mostly young liberal arts majors?
It’s the “meant to” that makes it a conspiracy theory. Tell me that news is unhealthy, or that each individual actor has self interest in promoting some agenda, and I think it’s an interesting topic.
But as soon as there is a person or group out there secretly “meaning for” some result from the actions of tens of thousands of people, that’s by definition a conspiracy.
I think it’s just human nature. We are wired to believe that “there must be some explanation”, and it’s easy to lean into a sentient God or an evil cabal.
IMO the truth, that it’s a runaway uncoordinated emergent behavior with thousands of actors pushing and pulling in different directions for their own reasons, is a lot scarier.
While there isn't some hidden moustache twirling mastermind carefully directing all of the media about what to report and how to report it. Practically, I don't think the distinction matters too much because they all share the same incentives and they are individually deliberate in applying those same incentives.
As a broad example, Tucker and Rachel both benefit from appealing to their respective base's political views. They also benefit greatly from the bickering between their bases, thus it suits them to further push that divide (if they actually get issues addressed they have to constantly figure out what people want next to stay relevant). Similar incentives apply to politicians, so they do the same. Both Tucker and Rachel also benefit from being close with the associated politicians, so they tow that line too. The result being that they act in concert without explicitly conspiring with each other to do so.
There are many interest groups pushing to influence mass behavior in many kinds of ways. Some do so transparently, others less so.
We've overloaded "conspiracy" to mean at least two different things: the traditional definition of secret plotting to do bad things and a more modern derogatory connotation involving far-fetched conspiracies like politicians being lizard people.
Something can be a conspiracy and also be true and it is reasonable to investigate the extent to which reporting is influenced by different interests.
