MSNBC has long been known as one of the most biased news organizations in the US among a host of other highly biased outlets. The hypocrisy of such an company admonishing the spread of disinformation in American society is probably not lost on most people, but it is also a survival mechanism for an industry that is swiftly fading into oblivion.
In numerous polls, the "mainstream media" is facing an integrity crisis. Only 32% of Americans say they trust corporate platforms a "great deal" or a "fair amount." A majority of the public say they rarely trust the media or never trust the media and faith in establishment journalism is near record lows. MSNBC, once the go-to bullhorn for the political left during the Trump Administration, has been on the receiving end of this fury with consistently low ratings and steeply declining influence over public discourse.
That said, the company is still a useful litmus test for insights into the mind of the political left as well as a window into the thinking of establishment elites. In a segment on disinformation featuring Michigan legal analyst Barbara McQuade, MSNBC actually engages in a mind boggling series of disinformation tangents. It's not so much hypocrisy as it is a master-class in propaganda.
Keep in mind that this is the same crew of people who recently asserted that Trump's 20 point primary victory over Nikki Haley in her home state of South Carolina is somehow a "disaster" for the Trump campaign. However, if we set aside the obvious anti-Trump bias for a moment, the deeper motivations of the above discussion become clear.
Why have Americans strayed away from the corporate media? The bottom line is that the media is no longer a center for objective journalism (and maybe it never was), it is a disinformation machine. The MSNBC segment above engages in disinformation in a number of ways.
For example, they attempt to plant unconscious associations between genocidal dictators and Donald Trump in the minds of their audience. They cite the "kidnapping conspiracy" case involving Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer as an example of public radicalization, but fail to mention that this event was utterly exposed as coordinated and controlled by the FBI. McQuade suggests only right-wing media as a source of "disinformation" while ignoring the endless trespasses and lies perpetuated by the left-wing media.
The analyst goes on to insult the American public by claiming they need to "get out of their basements" and off the internet to find the facts. In other words, they need to watch corporate media again and stay away from any alternative sources. MSNBC laments the problem of the public being separated and limited to "news bubbles," but this is a misrepresentation of what is really happening.
The topic of centralized control of news being a tool for dictators is broached, and the irony is dripping. America lived within a "news bubble" for decades. For generations, corporate media platforms dominated the distribution of information and had the ability to mold and influence the public at will. The populace had no other options. The explosion of the alternative media on the internet is a direct reaction to this long time centralization and abuse of news access.
Whenever mainstream pundits ask questions like "How do we get Americans to listen to the facts?" what they mean to say is, "How can we once again centralize and control what Americans get to see and hear?"
McQuade touches on this issue briefly, suggesting that there are a number of options for "regulation" of social media and online sources to combat "disinformation." She does not elaborate for obvious reasons - We all know that regulation of news and public discourse looks a lot like the authoritarianism that she claims to fear.
We have seen this disturbing trend in parts of the west including in Europe where online companies are required by law to heavily censor certain topics. What constitutes "hate speech" or "dangerous speech" is arbitrarily determined by a gaggle of socialist bureaucrats. This is the kind of news environment MSNBC prefers in the US.
We also witnessed the ugly nature of censorship during the pandemic hysteria, with alternative news sources crushed by rigged algorithms. The corporate media was collapsing up until that point, but they enjoyed preferential treatment by Big Tech and by governments during covid, to the point that searches on any current event forced readers to sift through hundreds of establishment media results before finding a single alternative view.
The talking heads at MSNBC were right about one thing: The methods of authoritarians might change, but the messages and intent stay the same. In our modern era corporate platforms are the voice of Big Brother, and the only way they can maintain control of the narrative is by becoming the preeminent source of information. That is to say, they can only accomplish dominance through suppression or regulation of alternative voices. They know that no one will listen to them otherwise.