Reduced diversity of opinion. Financial incentive to not cover or obfuscate news that would undermine their power. Case in point, Occupy Wall Street.

Occupy Wall Street was hardly not covered. If anything, it probably got a disproportionate amount of coverage given the small numbers of people and the lack of coherent demands.

It wasn’t a lack of coverage but the intention to make them all look silly by focusing on the silliest among them.

Is it obvious that we have reduced diversity of opinion?

To clarify, these are all stations owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which is the largest television station conglomerate in the United States. They've been pretty aggressive in buying up local stations, and have a reputation for exerting fairly strong editorial control and enforcing "must-run" opinion segments.

One study found that local stations bought by Sinclair reduce coverage of local events, increase coverage of national politics, and shift rightward in tone compared to other stations of the same area. http://joshuamccrain.com/localnews.pdf

To be honest, I'm not sure this shows lack of diversity of opinion - but it does show how consolidation of news media allows a handful of people to use local stations as sockpuppets for their beliefs in a way that hides the origin of the message.

>Reduced diversity of opinion.

Is there?

“The beauty of the system, however, is that such dissent and inconvenient information are kept within bounds and at the margins, so that while their presence shows that the system is not monolithic, they are not large enough to interfere unduly with the domination of the official agenda.” Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

Is that happening?

I was really hoping someone was actually checking beyond quotes, sentiment, and their own topics not getting enough airtime.

I take it that you didn't follow the Democratic Primaries? The mass hysteria that ensued on all channels when Bernie Sanders was leading the race, to be specific.

I didn't see any mass hysteria.

Seth Meyers is one of the few who addressed it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zjj7VJpqy1w. And that's just a minuscule fraction, the reporting was downright shameful across the board. You'd watch 10 channels and read 10 newspapers reporting on Sanders and you'd feel as if it was 1 channel and 1 paper. One has to wonder if that was due to Bernie proposing to break up internet and cable titans and to introduce a wealth tax. The cable titans own the majority of channels, after all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cross-ownership_in_the_U.... And the newspaper owning billionaires probably didn't like the wealth tax idea too much either.

Not the op, but I think any consolation of media will make people care less about their neighborhood and more about the world, which might be a good and a bad thing. Bad in that local news are often a tiny bit more actionable and social building, and good in that it makes progress faster.

I remember when I moved to another country and was absolutely shocked that they had local restaurant reviews on the news channels. Really appreciated it instead of all the doom and gloom. I visited quite a lot of them!

To be fair, lots of local nightly news shows in America have local restaurant reviews. My parents live outside of Asheville, NC, and their local nightly news on all the broadcast channels carries restaurant reviews and lots of "around town" happenings.

Have they ever aired a negative review?

It's the #1 reason why so many people have been voting against their own interest for the past 20 years

You mean why they don't vote what others that know better think "their own interest" should be?

Most of the major media companies have a pro-Democrat bias. Is that what you mean?

Democrats and Republicans only differ on societal issues. Smoke and mirrors pushed by the billionaires to avoid talking about the insanity that is unregulated capitalism, the only issue that actually matters.

Yep.

"It's ok to fuck the lives, communities, job prospects, etc. of blacks, latinos, gays, lesbians, whites, fill billionaires' pockets, and bomb foreign countries, but we care for correct pronouns, and are in favor of same-sex marriage and stuff. Oh, and yay for ACA [as if that solves anything]".

vs

"It's ok to fuck the lives, communities, job prospects, etc. of blacks, latinos, gays, lesbians, whites, fill billionaires' pockets, and bomb foreign countries, but we don't care for political correctness and we are pro-life and stuff. Oh, and yay for more tax-decuctions to the rich [as if that solves anything]".

Who would I vote for who is "in my interest" to vote for?

Kinda depends on who you are right? We would have to know that ...

Socialists, if you make less than $500k or if you care about more people living a decent life.

So,

(given the lack of an actual socialist party to vote for),

it's basically voting Democrats - a party complicit in the same neo-liberal policies, Wall Street bailouts and deregulation, warmongering, corporatism, looking down upon the "unwashed masses" (aka "deplorables"), and rampant corporate globalism (i.e. job outsourcing hitting the working classes) with the Republicans, that can't even stand a "soft" "socialist" like Bernie Sanders to be given a chance?

Not sure what your point is, I was obviously talking about Bernie (soft is right). Once again, inconsequent societal issues won over economic interests of these voters.

Can you explain?

I look at Rupert Murdoch here as complicit with an intentional political goal he achieved through his vast media network. Think all the conservative outlets. Fox news changing news to opinion not based in the same reality, not even accepting base facts - while most of their viewers take it as actual news and fact.

Not OP but generally poorer folks in US especially in rural parts vote for right which protects much more the rich. Its sold to them for generations under guise of 'American dream' and if you are not yet rich, well you just didn't work hard enough and should be ashamed and go back to work more and harder. Which is bullshit on many levels. Everybody in society benefits when poor are helped a bit and not kept poor and desperate. But that would require skimming a bit off the top, reshuffling few things and bottom jobs would still have to be paid livable wages without exception.

Compared to places where social inequality is much lower (ie some parts of Europe), US has some deep societal issues that I don't see going away soon, in contrary. Marketing has been very effective in branding any other idea as socialism/communism. And here is the media role, be it Hollywood, news etc - resist any change, our way is the best, it was and always will be. Don't think hard if its best for you, or you are not a true American.

Or it could be the opposite - from US conservative viewpoint those leaning left are harming themselves and US society in the long run (not that I agree with this, but I can understand why certain people would hold this opinion).

(I don't have a personal stake at this, just presenting an outsider's, potentially flawed view. When deciding where to settle around the globe US went quickly off the list for quite a few reasons, overall not a place I wanted to raise my kids in but that's another topic. That was despite obvious strengths of US society and location, as strengths don't cancel out weaknesses in my opinion).

The deregulation frenzy that started with Reagan/Thatcher and all over the world is responsible for the insane inequalities we have today. The billionaire owned media has a neoliberal agenda against regulation.

Of course they don't have to call journalists to tell them what to say, they recruit heads of HR who recruit neoliberal journalists/editorialists.

90% of people haven't seen their wages progressing that much in 20 years, yet they keep voting for the Biden/Trump/Macron/Bolsonaro of the world whom appeal is 100% created by the media.

Deregulation is also responsible for leaders doing nothing about global warming and so many other things that make the world a particularly shitty place right now.