Decades of propaganda...

This isn't a hypothetical after Watergate and Nixon having to resign they decided the issue was non biased reporting, so they started Fox News.

"A Plan for Putting the GOP on TV News," the 41-year-old memo that Cook says was a lynchpin in a "nakedly partisan 1970 plot by Ailes and other Nixon aides to circumvent the 'prejudices of network news' and deliver 'pro-administration' stories to heartland television viewers."

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/06/roger-ailes-nixon-gawker-documents/352363/

The neoliberal movement is trying to replicate it, but Republicans have too much of a head start, they'll never catch up.

But by now billionaires already own all the media because both parties have been de-regulating journalism and corporations.

For one thing, a greater reliance upon authority figures than critical thinking skills. That sounds bad, but really genuinely truly how many of us know better than an economics professor with a PhD and decades of experience in exactly that field, like Robert Reich? So we tend to think in like manner as well.

A big difference is that if said authority figure ever lets us down then we distrust anything that they say, while conservatives continue to offer the benefit of the doubt bc if they are in a position of authority, there must be a reason for it. Tbh, pastors telling people from behind a pulpit to watch Faux News has a lot to do with it...:-(