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A third party candidate who appears to be pulling from Democrats will receive a press blackout, and thus this will not happen. Third party candidates will receive publicity only if they pull from the Republicans.
I’m not convinced the media has the ability to black out a candidate who would genuinely have widespread appeal anyways, social media dominates many Americans’ information environment.
Now sure, the media can and will block out ‘no labels’, which as I understand it is just taking the least popular positions from each party and maybe trying to moderate just a tad, unless they think it will spoiler trump out of the race. But I think a candidate who actually has mass appeal is different.
Sure it can. Google has proven itself more than capable and willing to put a finger on the scales of goog search and youtube. Legacy media is owned by like 3 companies or so. If "they" really wanted to. "They" could blackball a candidate. Right now only Twitter of the mass media is "based" enough to resist such a political deplatforming campaign.
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It's not a matter of widespread appeal, it's a matter of enough appeal to act as a spoiler. The media does have the ability to black out candidates who might spoil Democrats.
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