I'd say there are quite a few issues (foreign policy, for instance) where the cable news networks are more or less in lockstep with each other but not really representative of the general views of Americans.

Or, to give you another example, consider the tremendous amount of opinion column space given to people like David Brooks who represent a tiny proportion of voters -- and then compare it to the total absence of, say, anyone aligned with Sanders (who I think we can pretty safely say is more popular than any of the world's Never-Trump Republicans).

IMO, that's a function of a subset of Organizations. Al jazeera news exists as part of a different spectrum, but they still customize their message for different nations. Brazil's local news has again got it's own very different spin on things.

I mean, yes, media from different countries is different. That's one reason why I go read RT once in a while. But the US is dominated by its own homegrown media.

>The Overton window is defined by the audience not the media.

Corbyn's enduring popularity in spite of initial hostility from every single media establishment would appear to contradict this narrative.

The agenda of each media outlet is clearly set by the owners albeit with market forces sometimes pushing them one way or the other.

Almost, the Overton window is often much wider than individual media companies use. However, your point actually supported my argument as the audience was clearly willing to accept outside the range of existing content.

In the reverse case everyone would ignore Corbyn as people do flat earthers. It's only because he exits within the audiences realm of acceptance that anyone is willing to pay attention.

The Overton window is not purely defined by what the audience thinks. Consider the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany or the US during WW2 when freedom of speech was at best a farce. In quasi democratic societies you’re constrained to stay within some distance of the median voter or have any attempt to influence the discourse break down. That’s plenty to influence politics. There’s a lot of difference between +1 and -1 standard deviations from the mean in politics, plenty to sustain the tribalism that’s the driver of most politics. Maybe you need to go up to + or - 2 s.d. to dampen dissent but I doubt you need to go further.

Imagine if the internet didn’t exist. Do you think anyone would have payed attention to the German New Year’s Eve rapes? It’s not like anyone in the media class was going to do it before the cover up was a story in itself.

I mostly agree with your point.

I was defining say Chinsease sensors as part of the audience rather than the news organization as the orignization does not have contowl over them. Much like in the US Fox News/CBS etc gets a list of words it can't say, they can add to that list but not remove from it.