[NorthMountain]

It was a “market place of ideas,”

In the 1800s ... sure.

By the 1970s, the idea of the "democrat paper" and the "republican paper" in town had nearly vanished. I saw its demise first hand. By the 1980s, it was gone entirely. TV was pure leftism from the beginning.

"Social media" introduced something that had never existed in my lifetime ... information channels that Big Media could not control.

[Red6]

The internet in its beginning was exactly as you describe, but with the advent of social media which is really controlled by 2 people and one of them having the majority share with 93 different platforms as part of Meta is anything BUT alternate information channels.

Again, look at Covid as an example.

The internet today is even WORSE than what the papers were in the early 90s.

[Wallace T.]

In 1971, an author named Joseph Keeley wrote a book, “The Left Leaning Antenna”, which chronicled the leftist character of the three TV networks. This problem of a left wing media has been around for a long time. You had the same pattern on the Left you see today: a liberal culture in academia, the tax-exempt foundations, and the media coddling radicals. The open communists have different names: SDS and the Weathermen then, Antifa and BLM now.