What makes the Cathedral (media + academia) so powerful and difficult to defeat is its decentralized nature. The way it works is like this: The peak of the corporate media is captured—compromised—in the pockets of those with the money, such as the banks, pharmaceutical corporations, and weapons manufacturers. That is why CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal are all pro-Fed, pro-war, and pro-vax. And it is why they all spin the narrative to paint ivermectin as a "horse de-wormer" that any human would be insane to use despite decades of it being a proven "safe and effective" medication for humans. The only "problem" with ivermectin is it is so damn cheap because it's out of patent.
The corporate media (which broadcasts advertisements for pharmaceutical drugs every ten minutes) is economically incentivized to favor Big Pharma and crush its adversaries. There is only a select few people at the top of the media food chain who receive implicit marching orders on how to construct their narrative about such issues as ivermectin. The rest at the network are unaware of the economic compromises and are oblivious to the fact that they are promoting a narrative and being shills for Big Pharma. They are just reading from the teleprompter or reporting the stories that are assigned to them. They wholeheartedly believe they are on the side of the little guy, fighting the good fight against "fake news," and are the sole arbiters of Truth. Of course, anyone hired for such an institution in the first place is carefully vetted to assure they are ideologically aligned and will follow orders and "play ball."
But then you have the independent media outlets—the bloggers and random blue-checks on Twitter—who are not receiving any sums of money to promote a pro-war or pro-pharma narrative. So why are they so emphatically pro-war and pro-pharma? Why do they try to make ivermectin out to be nothing but a horse de-wormer that would be foolish and dangerous for any human to use? They aren't getting any money from Big Pharma. So what's in it for them?
Prestige. Those small-time indie journalists don't actually do journalism, as in investigate and break stories—they get their news from already broken news from the thoroughly compromised institutions such as CNN and NYT (who get there "news" from corporate lobbyists and the CIA). The random journo's dream is to one day make it to the big leagues and work for those major corporate media institutions. They are in that early vetting phase of showing that they can play ball—that they will accept the narrative that is told to them from on high without independently investigating it (or God-forbid question it).
What is the point of having thousands of different news sources if they all report the same agenda? Their sole purpose is to confirm the narrative already being spun, to help create a snowball effect in which it seems as though everyone believes it so it must be true. When enough journos say ivermectin is nothing but a horse de-wormer, the average media consumer assumes that is all they need to know about it. This is why the Cathedral so desperately wants to censor those true journalists who go counter to the narrative and actually have independent thoughts. Such as people who point out the long history of scientifically rigorous positive effects of ivermectin and/or the low risk of Covid to young healthy people and the benefits of natural immunity.
This explains why the entire Cathedral media apparatus is always on the same page with every story (including ivermectin and Afghanistan), all promoting the same narrative. At least the indie journos have aspirations of making it big time. But what is the excuse for the populace? Why does the average media viewer become shills for Big Pharma and the military industrial complex? During the early phases of the pandemic, with Trump in office, liberals would say how they didn't trust Big Pharma and "Trump's rushed vaccine." Now they all happily get jabbed with that very same vaccine and demand that everyone else does the same. What gives?
Tribalism. The average liberal is friends with journalists and university professors who promote "the narrative." They only consume Cathedral-controlled media, so they are unaware that the narrative is a narrative. All their friends believe it. All their co-workers believe it. All their professors believe it. Everyone they follow on social media believes it. All the podcasts they listen to believe it. (They stopped listening to Joe Rogan because they were told he was a right-wing extremist promoting anti-science misinformation.) They are trained by the media to think that anyone who does not believe "the narrative" is a crazy conspiracy theorist. Actually, not just crazy but dangerous.
But why then do the most overzealous pieces of propaganda tend to appear in lower-tier media arms of the Cathedral, such as Rolling Stone, Vice, or Buzzfeed? Some such outlets could be infiltrated and financed by higher level Cathedral institutions, or the lower-level journos may simply be trying to impress the higher-ups in hopes of one day being called up to the major leagues. Though a better analogy than baseball may be hockey. These low level Cathedral media outlets are more like hockey goons. The elite media institutions use them to do their dirty work.
A common tactic of the Cathedral is using third-tier media outlets such as Rolling Stone magazine or Buzzfeed News to plant overt propaganda, then the top-tier media outlets source that story as fact, so later when the story is debunked and proven false, the top-tier outlets can say, "That wasn't our fault—we were just quoting Rolling Stone and they're just a music magazine so... what can you do?" Yet when the elite media outlets initially source the story from Rolling Stone, they expect everybody to take it seriously. Essentially the elite media gets to promote fake news without facing the repercussions from doing so. Even the lower-level media outlets like Rolling Stone and Buzzfeed don't face repercussions because it is the elite media that is supposed to hold them accountable. The right-wing media will call them out, but the left-wing media has trained their consumers to ignore anything the right-wing media says. The only response from the left-wing media is something akin to: "Oh you silly music magazine... Do better next time. (wink, wink)"
There is no better example of this than the recent media narrative against ivermectin. Originally the Cathedral tried to ignore ivermectin. The reason for this was obvious. If there already existed a medication that successfully treated Covid-19, then the vaccines could not have been granted Emergency Use Authorization by the FDA. So the Big Pharma-funded corporate media pretended that no such medication existed. But then ivermectin broke through the media's firewall (thanks to people like Joe Rogan, who is a threat to their media-narrative monopoly). The Cathedral could no longer ignore ivermectin, so they shifted the narrative and began framing it as a "horse de-wormer" to smear it. Which is like calling water "horse liquid."
Once the elite journalists at the top shift the narrative, then like dominoes, the entire Cathedral falls in line. Those below never need to be told this. They are just following what those above and around them say. They are terrified of falling out of line with their in-group. So they are constantly following the media narrative, monitoring for any changes for which they will have to update their NPC programming.
But you can't really blame an NPC for its actions. The average person who consumes corporate media is a victim. They are shilling for Big Pharma, cheering on the wars, and they get nothing out of it except the smug sanctimonious self-satisfaction of believing that they are good and smart and on the right side of history.
What to do? Attacking the Cathedral directly seems to have no effect. Since it is so decentralized, the only way to demolish the Cathedral is from the bottom up, not the top down. Help make the average consumers of the corporate press realize that they have been duped and taken advantage of. Not from a place of attack or hostility, but love and empathy. Reprogram the NPCs with a better operating system. This is, of course, easier said than done, and it will take time—likely generations—but it is an information war worth fighting for.