“Don’t look-a-me, don’t laugh-a-me, don’t talk-a-me.”

While I wasn’t even born yet, this saying of one of my sisters jumped to mind this week when I remembered the experience of trying several times during the pandemic to simply pray, work, or think in private but hearing the sounds, instead, of family members listening to what I considered too-loud political debate on television on another floor despite my best attempts to cover my ears, at one point, with even the most elaborately layered head covering of cotton, headbands, and noise-canceling headphones.

Why can’t I just work on my book in private, why do conservatives get so angry all of the time, why are they so loud, and why, why, why, are so many of their positions – these aliens – so similar to what I was just thinking?

At a time when I was trying to work through what sometimes felt like overwhelmingly challenging personal, professional, and family matters – and delving into public affairs only where it felt right to do so – the idea of politics had begun to feel almost secondary to me before I began to see how the concept of corporate media hegemony was being addressed – albeit obliquely and only to a degree – by its conservative sect.

A bias toward power consolidation was being identified and actually articulated, which was a relief to hear; but to the degree this bias’ source was corporate media business models themselves, it appeared to go almost totally unaddressed as debates about other matters of national concern seemed to get more and more unnecessarily heated.

Of course disputes performed by two sides equally incented to stoke rage only escalate as their arguably counterproductive profit motives go unacknowledged. And of course there will continue to be equally impressive high water marks, so to speak, to be measured on both sides of one container for a single substance.

But until the topic of modern journalism business models is isolated and addressed specifically, I believe enormous groups of people who deserve to feel reflected in public debate will continue to feel excluded and, if they do not guard themselves against it, susceptible to frustration.

This being one of the most important topics for debate of our time, I believe it will surface eventually, corporate media’s crown will be removed; and reading the news from the successors of journalism organizations today will feel good again because someone will, finally, be on it.