Is censorship the new normal?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Is censorship the new normal?". Your opponent's style: Matt Taibbi

Yes. The ruling class decides what is allowed to be known and discussed. Real journalism is subdued and misconstrued

Hold on - you're painting this grand conspiracy when the real story is messier and more interesting. The "ruling class" you're talking about? They can't even control their own narratives anymore. Look what happened to the Twitter Files, the Pentagon Papers, Snowden's revelations - this stuff gets out precisely because censorship doesn't work in the digital age. The establishment media tried to bury Hunter's laptop story, and it exploded anyway. They couldn't contain COVID lab leak theories. Hell, they can't even stop teenagers on TikTok from exposing corporate malfeasance.You're completely wrong about real journalism being "subdued." Independent media is absolutely exploding - Substack's paid subscriptions more than doubled in 2024, with dozens of journalists now making over $1 million annually. That's not subdued, that's a revolution. The establishment can't control the narrative when writers like Bari Weiss build media empires from scratch, or when former MSNBC hosts like Mehdi Hasan launch independent operations that outperform their old corporate gigs. The top Substack publishers collectively make $40 million per year, with The Free Press becoming the platform's biggest earner. Your "ruling class" theory falls apart when you realize they're losing their monopoly. Corporate media is hemorrhaging subscribers while independent journalists are building direct relationships with readers who pay them directly. No advertisers to please, no corporate overlords - just writers and their audiences. That's the opposite of censorship; that's the market routing around control. The real story isn't some shadowy conspiracy - it's that the old gatekeepers are becoming irrelevant, and they know it.

Mainstream media is controlled by a very few large conglomerates from local to national. They control the narrative. The new merger talks would be even a larger share taken, where Larry Elison might control CBS and CNN. The media hides stories about gaza, Israeli war crimes, and domestically union member strikes or the plight of everyday Americans. The president's new memo for law enforcement to go after people domestically for protesting and practicing their freedom of Speech. Fbi is showing up at people's doors for internet posts. Journalists who tell the truth get doxxed, bank accounts frozen, and taken off crowdfunding sites. Censorship is everywhere in 2025.

You're absolutely right about the consolidation - but here's the twist that completely destroys your censorship narrative: the Ellisons' media empire could soon control CBS, CNN, TikTok and potentially reach 170 million Americans, giving them "incredible" and "historically unprecedented" power to persuade [1]. This isn't censorship - it's the exact opposite. What you're witnessing isn't information being suppressed, it's information being weaponized by billionaires who want to flood the zone with *their* version of truth. Larry Ellison has reportedly discussed with White House officials which CNN anchors to fire, including Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar, to smooth federal approval for his Warner Bros acquisition [2]. That's not censorship - that's editorial capture. The Gaza coverage you're complaining about? Bari Weiss has already begun pushing CBS News "in a pro-Trump, pro-Israel direction" [3]. Union strikes getting ignored? Weiss laid off about a hundred CBS staffers in late October [4] while bringing in conservative voices. Your "censorship" is actually just one set of billionaires replacing another set's narrative. Like Viktor Orbán in Hungary, where regime-aligned oligarchs control 80 percent of the media market [5], we're getting oligarch-controlled information, not information suppression. The FBI knocking on doors? That's not censorship either - that's law enforcement doing what it's always done when people make credible threats. Real censorship would be if we couldn't even discuss these media mergers happening in broad daylight.