Once people acept media bias the next jump they make that this is a partisan issue. It's easy to understand why, particularly now when there are major news outlets who deliberately lie.

But the problem is way more insidious and pervasive than performative partisan issues, which are generally manufactured culture wars. Those issues serve two purposes:

1. To make people angry and keep them angry. Angry people are "engaged"; and

2. To sow division and prevent class solidarity.

One of the most wildly successful examples of propaganda is the idea of the middle class. This serves to demonize the so-called "lower classes", typically labeling them as lazy, criminal, morally bankrupt and drains on the state.

There are only two classes: labor and capital owners.

Yet propaganda has been so successful that labor will defend the interests of billionaires to the detriment of their own interests. The number of people who would die on the hill of opposing Musk and Bezos paying slightly more taxes is depressing.

Media is a key tool in this endeavour. It's why you see wall-to-wall coverage of the China balloon (which literally does not matter at all) and a virtual media blackout of the environmental catastrophe and massive corporate failings that underpin the East Palestine train derailment.

Media represents and advocates for corporate interests and systemic interests.