The Media's Censorship of Media

 In full disclosure, I have never heard of ANTIWAR.COM or The American Conservative, so I was very curious to go through these sites. As I read more about these sites, I thought of many potential theories as to why these organizations are so underground. 

Sedition Act of 1918 Announcement
via @librarycongress on Twitter 

    One reason Antiwar and The American Conservative are not mainstream could be because of the effects of the 1918 Sedition Act. Although it was struck down in 1964, this act was originally created to silence anti-war protests during WWI. For a period of time, the government was able to control what views were published about the U.S.'s stance in foreign affairs, and it was illegal to speak out against their actions. Although no legal action can still be taken for something like this, there may be a perception that supporting a news outlet that is strongly anti-war is wrong because there was a previous conclusion that someone who is anti-war is also anti-America. 

    Another reasons they are not mainstream could be because of the censorship that is a result of media giants such as Twitter and Facebook, with the help of Google, Amazon, and Apple, controlling what is promoted on their sites. Both Twitter and Facebook have censored right leaning outlets by not pushing their headlines as they would a left outlet's. For example, Twitter froze The New York Post's Twitter account after the organization tweeted links to their articles about the Hunter Biden scandal, a story that had the potential to hurt Joe Biden's presidential campaign. More recently, Google, Amazon, and Apple blocked Parler, a Twitter-esque app with over a million users, and whose numbers were growing quickly as a result of many Trump supporters leaving Twitter following the former president's permanent ban from it. This showed a bias and censorship against Republican viewpoints, so it makes sense that these same companies would not push content from The American Conservative to their users. 

    Antiwar might be less mainstream because it is not necessarily news people are seeking out. In my limited life experience, I have found that a lot of people do not have a full understanding of the U.S. government's foreign affairs, nor an in-depth understanding of what is going on in places like the Middle East. This is very much a result of the ethnocentric mindset a lot of Americans hold where they are only focused on what is happening directly in our country and only concerned with issues directly affecting their lives.

    Mainstream media outlets are businesses that want to make money; they want to run stories that people
will click on and read, therefore they cater to what their readers wants to hear. They are not necessarily publishing fake news, but realistically, they cannot run a headline for every single event that happens, so they have to choose which headlines are the most important that will also please the most readers. For example, MSNBC readers commonly lean left, politically, therefore, they might be less inclined to click on stories about the bombs that were dropped in the Middle East during President Obama's presidency. On the other hand, the right leaning FoxNews readers might not want to read about the increase in civilian deaths due to U.S. airstrikes during the Trump Administration. 

    Due to the combination of people only wanting to read good things about people they like, as well as the lack of interest some Americans have towards our foreign affairs, news companies could be less inclined to feature stories about these situations. This feeds into the lack of knowledge people have about the situation, therefore, they have no desire to pursue these topics on sites such as Antiwar. 

    By no means am I claiming that the major news outlets do not report on foreign affairs. I am only saying that there seems to be less featured articles talking about the specifics of these topics. Therefore, since people are not seeing these headlines on their preferred news outlet, they will be less likely to further research into these topics using other sources

    In conclusion, although ANTIWAR.COM and The American Conservative are legitimate news outlets with accomplished writers, these sites are not mainstream due to a lack of interest over the topics they cover, as well as their political leanings limiting the amount of promotion from online platforms.