You mean the base that keeps re-electing those reps and senators? The one that lets many statewide offices go unchallenged?

Because our establishment news sources are so bad that no one can get accurate information to choose the right candidates?

If a voter isn’t resourceful enough to find decent journalism—my small city has at least two sources—then my question is where’s the effort to investigate the candidates?

I’ve read this comment half a dozen times, and I’m still gobsmacked. What reality are you currently occupying? Because I think many of us would like to reside there too.

Are you talking to me? If so, I guess I wasn’t clear, because I agree with your original post. Blaming the media for the result of the election only goes so far. Not every voter who carried Trump to victory is a Fox viewer….Reagan’s war on public education started our slide.

I was. I find the claim that there are quality news outlets covering politics in nearly every city in America, and the expectation that people need to seek them out in order to to make reasonably informed choices in the voting booth, incredible.

I think the media does an absolutely horrendous job of covering politics, and that we will not have a better politics until we have a better media.

…or a public education system like the one we had before Reagan slashed funding for public schools, Pell grants, NDSLs and GSLs. Furthermore, we will not have a better mainstream media without eliminating monopolies.

I don’t think people were any better informed pre-Reagan. It was just that the media operated under a post-war consensus, and the rightwing had not decided it needed to rely on 24/7 propaganda to become dominant.

I do. TV news wasn’t monetized, and newspapers were responsible and had the resources to responsibly report and investigate. Craigslist killed newspapers, and social media and greed killed responsible broadcast media.

The outlets are there if you look for them. I live in a ruby red half of a blue state, and the two I mention—one is a free (very popular) actual newspaper, the other an online only.

Just a comment- a lot of older people don’t have the wherewithal to know that there are great sources for accurate news other than network tv ie Breaking Points, Secular Talk, Majority Report, Krystal Kyle, and Friends, Electronic Intifada just to name a few. All on YouTube free of charge