Hacker Cinema
Bombshell
2019 · Film · 109 min
Directed by Jay Roach
Bombshell is a revealing look inside the most powerful and controversial media empire of all time; and the explosive story of the women who brought down the infamous man who created it.
1 positive2 neutralfrom 3 commenters
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3 comments on Hacker News
I think there's another layer here with the virtue signalling side of it, and that depends on the exact communities/movements that a person is a part of. Like, where is the cancellation of Marjorie Taylor Greene over the absurd Holocaust comments? Matt Gaetz claims to be "cancelled" but could appear on multiple prime time cable news shows basically whenever he wants [1]. It was a huge battle getting Bill O'Reilly off the air, and he walked with a $32M severance, more money than most normal people see in a lifetime— see the movie Bombshell for a dramatization of that story. These people aren't cancellable because they're already powerful, protected, and the audience they have doesn't care about the complaints (or revels in them).
Maybe it's something of a reaction to these frustrations that some progressive circles have adopted this knee-jerk zero tolerance stance, where no crime or perceived crime is too small to attempt to silence someone for. YouTube film commentator Lindsay Ellis went through a bunch of this recently, and basically dealt with it by making a 1.5 hour video where she itemizes everything she's been accused of, and drinks her way through explaining and apologizing for all of it (including, wretchedly, sharing about her own history with a sexual assault). [2]
[1]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/matt-gaetz-twitter-deep-state-b1830221.html
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7aWz8q_IM4
There is only one data point on advertisers.
It doesn't matter how many eyes/ears you reach out to. You can have 5%, but if you can twist the arm of the advertisers (the ones who really keep your media company alive), to force them to advertise less on others and more to you (or cut them off completely), then you can slow & steady change the game by controlling the funding of your competition.
Yes this is a very simplistic approach, but throw enough 'junk food' out there, lower the level (gossip, reality shows)(trash tv a la Berlusconni) and presto!
Edit: I just remembered watching the movie Bombshell (2019), and if the depiction of the Murdoch family is anywhere near the truth, they are utterly disgusting (and complicit).
I think these three books offer a solid framework for providing an answer to your question:
1) The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It by Robert Reich [0]
- Reich drops the buzzword neoliberalism in favor of the word power. I like that as neoliberalism is a terrible phrase for the concept it describes, but make no mistake, it's the insidious, invisible nature of neoliberalism that put our country in a position where neither party served the people well. That is what Reich describes here.
2) The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News-and Divided a Country by Gabriel Sherman [1]
- There is also a Showtime miniseries based on the book you could watch. Pair with the movie Bombshell
3) Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer [2]
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52118381-the-system
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15981705-the-loudest-voice-in-the-room
[2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27833494-dark-money