Media Accountability
The media is supposed to hold power accountable — but who holds the media accountable? Most major news outlets are owned by corporations with their own political and financial interests, creating structural conflicts of interest that shape coverage in ways most readers never see.
Gen Us covers media accountability because understanding how news is produced — who owns the outlets, who funds them, what they leave out — is essential to being an informed reader. Propaganda techniques are not relics of the 20th century; they are embedded in everyday coverage across the political spectrum.
We analyze outlet ownership chains, document propaganda techniques in real coverage, compare how different outlets frame the same story, and track the revolving door between media companies and the political and corporate institutions they cover.
Key Questions We're Asking
- •How do ownership structures — corporate parents, billionaire owners, state funders — influence editorial decisions?
- •Which propaganda techniques appear most frequently in mainstream coverage, and do patterns differ by outlet?
- •How do different outlets frame the same story, and what does the framing reveal about their priorities?
- •What is the relationship between advertising revenue and editorial coverage of advertisers?
- •How does the revolving door between media and politics affect coverage quality?
What Mainstream Media Misses
- •Media outlets almost never cover their own ownership conflicts of interest or those of their competitors.
- •Propaganda techniques like loaded language, omission bias, and false equivalence are used daily but never identified or explained to readers.
- •The consolidation of media ownership — fewer companies controlling more outlets — is treated as a business story rather than a democracy story.
- •Advertising relationships with major corporations are never disclosed alongside coverage of those corporations.
Follow the Money
- •Six corporations control over 90% of American media: Comcast, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, Fox, and Sony.
- •Digital advertising revenue (dominated by Google and Meta) has decimated local news, creating news deserts in hundreds of communities.
- •Billionaire ownership of outlets — Jeff Bezos (Washington Post), Patrick Soon-Shiong (LA Times), Marc Benioff (Time) — raises questions about editorial independence.
- •Media companies spend millions lobbying Congress on copyright, Section 230, and media ownership regulations.