Elections are basically controlled by the media. They publish the news you consume, filtered through their editorial stance. They control the narrative. It’s all headlines, clickbait and eyeballs, only in this century it’s done algorithmically through social media too. You are never getting an unfiltered, unbiased opinion of the state of affairs, you are getting a carefully curated snapshot.

While there is still more nuance to it than that, there is still truth. In the UK, one of Rupert Murdoch’s papers The Sun likes to boast about their political influence on voters. “It’s The Sun what won it.” This is a bare faced statement that The Sun basically decides on their candidate of choice and voters go with that.

So it is when you depend on a so-called free press to give you the facts in nice, bite-sized form.