Western and Independent Media

On the fundamental difference between “Western media” and some state-controlled media.

Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari:

“We see then that the new information technology of the late modern era gave rise to both large-scale democracy and large-scale totalitarianism. But there were crucial differences between how the two systems used information technology. As noted earlier, democracy encourages information to flow through many independent channels rather than only through the centre, and it allows many independent nodes to process the information and make decisions by themselves. Information freely circulates between private businesses, private media organizations, municipalities, sports associations, charities, families, and individuals without ever passing through the office of a government minister.In contrast, totalitarianism wants all information to pass through the central hub and doesn’t want any independent institutions making decisions on their own. True, totalitarianism does have its tripartite apparatus of government, party, and secret police. But the whole point of this parallel apparatus is to prevent the emergence of any independent power that might challenge the centre. When government officials, party members, and secret police agents constantly keep tabs on one another, opposing the centre is extremely dangerous.”