luigi mangione, the tiktok ban, and manufactured consent

how traditional media is trying to control narratives in the digital age

I think everyone’s noticed a deeply unsettling disconnect between how the media covered the UnitedHealthCare CEO shooting, and how the internet reacted to it.

Immediately after Brian Thompson’s assassination, Democrats and Republicans alike took to the internet to express their frustration with the health insurance system in the United States—a reaction that couldn’t have been further from how traditional news outlets covered the story. While the public’s condolences were “out of network,” the media ignored them, and stuck to the narrative of playing up sympathy for the victim.

Watching this incongruence play out, I couldn’t help but analogize it to Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model in Manufacturing Consent, which argues that traditional news coverage is shaped by media owners, advertisers, and a mutualistic relationship with the government. Under this model, any stories about Luigi Mangione and UnitedHealthCare had to pass through specific content filters and market forces before being presented to the public.

Social media, meanwhile, presents a new challenge to the hierarchy of consent. Now people can bypass the traditional media and widely broadcast what’s on their mind—which they did, giving us a very different angle of the same story.

You can see this play out with Luigi’s manifesto, which traditional media obtained but then refused to publish. Their paternalistic justification was that they wanted to prevent any copycat attacks—but at least one source at NBC revealed that “they did not want to antagonize their law enforcement sources who had provided them access to the manifesto.”

Then Ken Klippenstein went ahead published the manifesto on his Substack because he could. As an independent journalist, he wasn’t beholden to any government agency or rich executive, so he was able to subvert the usual filters and thus the dominant media narrative.

Klippenstein’s scoop speaks to the power of the internet in circumventing manufactured consent, and it’s exactly what the gatekeepers hate about social media. Anybody can have a platform, and mass communication is democratized.

If it was up to them, we wouldn’t have this power, but they know they can’t stop us from using social media entirely. Instead, they’ve chosen TikTok as their battleground, since it’s the platform they currently control the least.

This has been clear since the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war in October 2023. While the traditional media stuck to their pro-Israel angle, Palestine supporters on TikTok have very visibly been using the app to disagree with the controlling narrative, upsetting pro-Israel groups that ultimately lobbied for the ban.

Lawmakers jumped at the opportunity, showing that this is about so much more than just China. Since TikTok isn’t owned by a US company, it’s been the least beholden to manufactured consent. With a ban, the gatekeepers can use American-owned platforms to better cultivate the legitimizing myths keeping them in power.

Much like the stories about Brian Thompson, this goes against the zeitgeist of the American people. Both liberals and conservatives rely on TikTok for news and entertainment, while only 32% actually support a ban. Nevertheless, we’re headed there soon—and we’ll continue to see our mass communication be subtly shaped behind the scenes.

Make sure I don’t go broke after the ban! Pre-order my book ALGOSPEAK for more takes on how social media is shaping our language.