There has been Upton Sinclair’s Brass Check…there has been John Keracher’s The Head-Fixing Industry. Orson Welles and Citizen Kane, all the way up to Chomsky’s analysis of propaganda.
A politician must not convey an “anti-corporate message” or challenge any significant corporate interest. That means in effect that he or she cannot advocate any serious reform.
But it goes back to Marx:
“The class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it . . . the ruling class regulates the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch.” - German Ideology.
A free press is a romanticised past. The capitalist class has always been able to effectively silence critics by monopolizing control over the media. The media reflects the society it operates in, one poisoned by the reality that its first priority must be for sales and profits.
There is a saying in the UK which applies to the US:
"You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
thank God! the British journalist.
But, seeing what the man will do
unbribed, there's no occasion to"
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