An Arm of The State

October 8, 2020 Robert Higgs

Imagine an ostensibly independent source of information, constantly bombarding the public, that ceaselessly fans the fires of fear and group hatred. Could anything be of greater use to the government as it seeks to mislead and thus control people?

Ladies and gentlemen, I present the so-called mainstream news media. The state could not have a more powerful friend. No wonder it has captured the media and made a tool of them in ways great and small, direct and indirect. By now, we are entitled to view the mainstream media as really just an arm of the state.

Written by Robert Higgs

Robert Higgs is Senior Fellow in Political Economy at the Independent Institute and Editor at Large of the Institute’s quarterly journal The Independent Review. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins University, and he has taught at the University of Washington, Lafayette College, Seattle University, the University of Economics, Prague, and George Mason University. He has been a visiting scholar at Oxford University and Stanford University, and a fellow at the Hoover Institution and the National Science Foundation.