This is titled with apologies to Marshall McLuhan's memory for the bastardization of his famed pronouncement, "the media is the message". Truly though, the apology should be rendered by the media itself rather than a poor political missionary attempting to characterize the dissolution of the once-respected profession of journalism.
Perhaps it would be more fitting to say the 'message is the narrative,' but both turns of phrase are applicable. Media is the vehicle to disseminate tales as well as the embodiment of those tales contrived to promote a social outcome. In other words, media carries the narrative and is the narrative (message) at the same time. Either way, the narrative is propaganda, plain and simple.
