How conservative voices reshaped the American narrative
I remember the first time I saw the towers fall. It was a Tuesday morning in September, and I was standing in my living room. Coffee cup in hand. Staring at the television screen with a mixture of disbelief and horror. Frozen. A good friend visiting from New York, Bonnie, was still asleep. I woke her up — you have to see this. All her family were there. In New York. I don’t remember if we said much. We were both in shock. She was very anxious and unable to get through on the phone.
We stayed glued to the TV all day. Switching between channels. The world had changed they said. And I believed them. What I didn’t realize was that the world had been changing long before that moment. In ways both subtle and profound. The very medium through which I was witnessing history was itself a part of that change.
It’s a peculiar thing—to watch the world through a screen. We think we’re seeing reality, but what we’re really seeing is a carefully curated version of it. I’ve spent years trying to understand how that curation happens. Who’s behind it. What it means for all of us.
This is the story of how the American media landscape transformed from a diverse ecosystem into a carefully orchestrated chorus. With the conservative movement as its ambitious conductor.
Vietnam
The journey begins, as so many American stories do, with war. Vietnam. I was too young to remember it firsthand. But I’ve seen the images—napalm-scorched children, soldiers wading through rice paddies. Walter Cronkite’s solemn face as he declared the war a stalemate. It was the first televised war and it changed everything.
I once spoke with a veteran who told me, “We didn’t lose the war in the jungle. We lost it in the living rooms of America.” His words stayed with me. A haunting reminder of the power of images and narratives. It was a lesson not lost on the conservative movement—which saw in the media’s coverage of Vietnam not just a reflection of reality, but the shaping of it. And they wanted it. To control it. All of it.
In the years that followed, I watched as a new kind of media began to emerge. It started slowly at first — a magazine here, a radio show there. But then came a man named Rupert Murdoch. An Australian media mogul with grand ambitions and a knack for giving people what they wanted. Even if they didn’t know they wanted it yet.
I remember the launch of Fox News in 1996. “Fair and Balanced,” they called it. A slogan that seemed to carry within it an implicit criticism of all that had come before. I was skeptical but curious. I tuned in with millions of others and found myself swept up in a world where the lines between news and opinion blurred. Until they disappeared altogether. There was no “Fair and Balanced.” Just bullshit masquerading as truth.
“We didn’t lose the war in the jungle. We lost it in the living rooms of America.”
As the years passed, I began to notice a pattern. The same voices. The same opinions. Echoing across different platforms. It was as if someone had pressed a button and suddenly every radio station, every local news broadcast, every newspaper editorial was singing from the same hymn sheet. I later learned about the Telecommunications Act of 1996. About media mergers and acquisitions. About the Sinclair Broadcast Group. The pieces began to fit together. Murdoch. Fox News. Forming a picture that was as fascinating as it was disturbing.
In the media and broadcasting sector, most media ownership regulations were eased, and the cap on radio station ownership was eliminated. — Telecommunications Act of 1996
Iraq
I remember the run-up to the Iraq War vividly. I was in Romania working as the troops were amassing in the Black Sea. It takes a long time to prepare for an invasion. Months, while in America they were still pretending to search for ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction.’ Bullshit. The drumbeat of war was constant, inescapable. And it had already started.
I watched as journalists who should have been asking tough questions instead became cheerleaders for invasion. Later, I would learn that a staggering percentage of pro-war editorials were owned by a handful of media conglomerates. The realization left me feeling hollow, betrayed by institutions I had trusted to tell me the truth.
In my quest to understand this new media landscape, I’ve sat through endless programming of conservative talk radio hosts. Spent hours dissecting Fox News broadcasts — analyzing their chyrons, tracking their talking points across days and weeks. I’ve watched as narratives took shape. As certain phrases were repeated ad nauseam until they became a part of the national conversation. I’ve seen how a single story can be spun and respun. Each iteration moving further from fact and closer to a predetermined narrative.
I’ve watched interviews with executives at media conglomerates. The passion in their eyes. The unwavering belief that they’re fighting the good fight against a liberal elite that has lost touch with real America. Bullshit.
I’ve also spoken with journalists who have been silenced. With viewers who feel more confused and angry than informed. With families torn apart by the widening political divide. I’ve watched as the echo chambers grew louder. As facts became malleable things, shaped to fit narratives rather than the other way around.
Two decades after the war began, a review of Pew Research Center surveys on the war in Iraq shows that support for U.S. military action was built, at least in part, on a foundation of falsehoods. — Pew Research
America
As I sit in my study, surrounded by notes and memories, I wonder what Walter Cronkite would make of our current media landscape. Would he recognize the industry he once called home? Would he see in our fractured, polarized discourse the seeds of something he warned us about long ago? How would he talk about the Ukraine? Gaza?
The story of right-wing media consolidation is not just a story about business or politics. It’s a story about us — about how we understand our world. How we relate to each other. How we decide what’s true and what isn’t. It’s a story that continues to unfold. With consequences we’re only beginning to understand.
I look out my window at the America I love — complex, contradictory, always in flux — I can’t help but feel a sense of vertigo. The ground beneath our feet is shifting. The lens through which we view that shift is itself distorted. In this new world, where reality is increasingly mediated and monetized, we must learn to be our own fact-checkers. Our own truth-seekers.
The right-wing takeover of American media is a human story. A critical story to tell. And like all human stories, it’s messy, complicated—and far from over. As we continue to spin through this brave new media world, one thing becomes clear—our responsibility for understanding it. Seeing through the smoke and mirrors — lies with each of us. The truth is out there. We just have to be willing to look for it.
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