Someone asked me about opinion-making — whether it’s possible to create and control opinion. The question was about whether a newspaper or website could push a candidate to the front, and thus assure that candidate’s success.
I’ve been writing for years, about sundry topics, but I don’t believe in opinion-making. People make up their own minds, for or against a topic (or a candidate). Americans are a literate and educated people, and often independent-minded. They don’t need someone to guide them.
The influence of writing isn’t that the writer ‘makes’ opinion, but that, upon reading something, others will consider or reject it wholly on their own. Some may say that they feel the same way as the writer does; others may object. No opinions, however, are made during this process. Changed a bit, perhaps, but not made.
That doesn’t mean — and this was the questioner’s concern, I think — that some won’t try to push their friends and allies forward, in the best possible light. They will. As long as people have been writing, they’ve been advocating. Admittedly, some of this advocacy is disingenuously and ridiculously denied, but it’s obvious enough, nonetheless.
There’s no particular reason for concern. People aren’t as impressionable as would-be people-of-influence imagine (and hope) they are. Not at all, actually. Beyond that, in a free community with diverse and easily accessible media, alternative views will emerge to challenge status-quo platitudes.
There’s a view of nineteenth-century England that’s like this: that England was the decisive European power because she balanced against Continental blocs. She wasn’t of the majority, so to speak, but rather her influence counterbalanced an otherwise powerful collection of rival powers, preventing them from overcoming all Europe. As others waxed and waned, she adjusted accordingly, to establish a new balance.
New media, emerging now and again, are like this: more than capable of preventing a single, conventional view from overwhelming a place.