of our thinking have become variables.

The repeal was completed in 1987.

The result was a rapid consolidation in the radio station markets.

populations that hold the opposite position on both questions.

If consumer preferences were manufactured by sellers, and citizens’ beliefs were manufactured by elites, then both anchors of liberal market democracies were fundamentally unstable.

Some shared means of defining what facts or beliefs are off the wall and what are plausibly open to reasoned debate is necessary to maintain a democracy.

strong Republicans, Trump-approving respondents, and self-described conservatives are the most likely to behave like party loyalists and simply accept the Trump cue—in either direction.” When Trump promoted a conservative position, his supporters agreed. When Trump adopted a more liberal position, they agreed.

This flurry of work exhibited a broad sense that as a public we have lost our capacity to agree on shared modes of validation as to what is going on and what is just plain whacky.

It is simply unreasonable to pin the blame for patterns of trust and distrust in media, or the rise of Trump, on a medium that is consistently used less by demographic groups that express that distrust or support the president and is used more by