Well, what in the Political Discussions forum is ever really needed? We only set it up as a containment area for this stuff so that Off Topic wouldn't be overrun.
OMG. Like I said -- yowie! Just yowie. There's not enough bandwidth in the Universe to justify this... new low for DI.
A meme is quite different from a cartoon. A cartoon will usually feature an artistic drawing in an unrealistic or semi-realistic style. Graffiti is widely considered artwork. Is meme art? A meme, much like artwork, can be used to tell a story through visual representation. For people with low attention spans, memes work great to convey a message quickly. The message uses culture to transmit a message or narrative to the user that will often have some emotional appeal. This is an advantage memes have over text. Sometimes memes are like an inside joke where if you can't understand the significance of the image, then you won't be able to fully understand the meme, such as the one I made below.
Is the media above scrutiny? When they act as wholly owned subsidiaries of their favorite political party, I, for one, feel at the very least justified in complaining about it.
I think the issue is that “most” people recognize much of the media is as you describe so denouncing what most people already recognize doesn’t negate that one “side” “wins” by having the more persuasive or accepted argument. Each “side” claims the same thing about the “other” without holding “their” news arm accountable for fear that they will lose ground while the “other” side continues. Desiring a return to a more neutral news reporting period won’t make it so and is unlikely to occur in the foreseeable future based on the current trends.
That's Fox News and, for a lesser degree, MSNBC. All the other mainstream outlets are not doing a very good job informing people, but are not a "subsidiary" of any party. They are for profit, ratings hungry show business joints.