re: When did "the news" flip to propaganda?

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It may have started to flip a little with Clinton, but it crossed the Rubicon in 2008 with Obama.

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I'm going to go a little further. I think the seeds were planted with the "Rock the Vote" campaign in 1990. While it started as a method of getting new voters registered and out to vote in the mid-terms, it really started growing leading up to the 1992 election with the Clinton campaign.

This (and successive) programs have pushed voter registration but as a vehicle for party votes. In other words, the drive isn't usually to register new voters so much as it is to get new voters (who often aren't paying much attention to politics) to vote for a certain party/candidate (and it's usually Democrat).

Those young adults who rocked the vote of the 1990s are the broadcasters, politicians, teachers and professors of today. As they've moved into higher positions we've seen a stark difference in coverage. When Clinton was in office, there was a new scandal almost every week. Travelgate, Lewinsky, Whitewater, Paula Jones, Vince Foster, etc. These (and many others) led to Bill and Hillary (but mainly Bill) being lampooned by late night hosts, SNL, etc.

This continued into the GW Bush administrations, but then suddenly stopped with Obama. Right-leaning news would carry stories which cast Obama in a negative light, but those increasingly disappeared from the majority of news media while not even SNL lampooned Obama. It seemed to change back when Trump got into office, but Biden's term has shown that it's become almost completely biased.

The news media of the 1990s and prior had field days with Biden's plagiarism. Today? The guy shakes hands with empty air, often has trouble speaking, reportedly couldn't even remember Obama's name, etc. and it's largely ignored by the media.

I remember watching PBS evening news in the early 1990s. I was just starting to follow politics. The news host introduced Senator Teddy Kennedy and a Republican (may have been Gingrich) to debate an issue. The host described Kennedy as the "liberal lion" and the Republican as the "archconservative". I thought to myself, "that ain't fair."

Lots of reasons, some already cited: Tet, Watergate, covering up for Clinton, worshipping Obama, hating Trump.

Through the 19th century newspapers were expected to be partisan. But as the costs of running a paper rose their numbers shrank, & papers began assuming an image of "impartiality" to get a larger readership.

Now that the news audience has fragmented again, the MSM has returned to their original model of partisanship.

Operation Mocking Bird

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may have started to flip a little with Clinton, but it crossed the Rubicon in 2008 with Obama.

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Definitely doesn’t correspond primarily with:

A) our own transition from a brief educational viewing opportunity to it being news entertainment 24/7

B) us getting access to a billion more sources that change the idea of us sharing the reality of whatever was in that hour

been that way for a while now... 24 hour news channels had to basically invent stories, and while at the beginning they'd cover boring arse shite to fill the time between their more major programs, once they figured out that the public was salivating over every negative and scandalous story, it was off to the races.... it's got bad with the end of Bush/beginning of Obama, and went completely off the fricking rails with end of Obama/beginning of Trump....

at this point, it's just an echo chamber for whatever your political preference... being an independent, i have to cycle thru the main 3 to be able to disseminate what's the actual story

William Randolph Hearst , so 1895? Maybe before.

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Obama was, according to former show writer James Downey, too perfect for jabs.

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that’s so cringe lmao

Operation paper clip

The day you see the light.