The thing about the mainstream news people need to realize is that beyond all the ideological reasons, they run fear mongering stories because it keeps people watching. Theres the cheesy local news "IS NINTENDO GIVING YOUR KIDS AUTISM?!? Tune in at 8 to find out!" shit, but the major ones like MSNBC and CNN basically just do a better executed version of this. Their goal isnt to inform their viewer, its to keep people watching and they keep people watching by generating 'entertaining' stories that will peak their interest.
Other than that, journalist for the most part have always been scumbags like this, as well as hyperpartisan. Washington used to complain all the time because newspapers (which were just out in the open political party or faction publications) would just tell ridiculous lies about how he was a British royalist in secret, or selling off America to Spain or was a half cherokee hermaphrodite who fucked his mom ect. Its just that after the pentagon papers, boomers raised journalist as some sort of sacred profession of watchdogs of democracy or whatever. Actually good journalist who do expose corruption are few and far between, I think people like Assange or Greenwald or good examples, but most are just social climbers who dont give a shit.
The thing is the fluff piece actually proves this as false. For decades they have advertised a Fluff piece at the end of the news, because that keeps people watching till the end. People only wanted to know about the skateboarding squirrel, or how the firefighter saved a family of hedgehogs. Too much bad news and they stopped watching altogether.
They would not need to manipulate people into watching bad news if that's what people actually wanted.
They may have created a dependency on bad news in our current society, but people didn't get there without intentional manipulation.
And now the internet broke the fluff mechanism. People will just google it during the first commercial break, watch it on youtube, and turn off the news. So the news has to report more and more dire threats to keep viewers hooked.
The thing about the mainstream news people need to realize is that beyond all the ideological reasons, they run fear mongering stories because it keeps people watching. Theres the cheesy local news "IS NINTENDO GIVING YOUR KIDS AUTISM?!? Tune in at 8 to find out!" shit, but the major ones like MSNBC and CNN basically just do a better executed version of this. Their goal isnt to inform their viewer, its to keep people watching and they keep people watching by generating 'entertaining' stories that will peak their interest.
Other than that, journalist for the most part have always been scumbags like this, as well as hyperpartisan. Washington used to complain all the time because newspapers (which were just out in the open political party or faction publications) would just tell ridiculous lies about how he was a British royalist in secret, or selling off America to Spain or was a half cherokee hermaphrodite who fucked his mom ect. Its just that after the pentagon papers, boomers raised journalist as some sort of sacred profession of watchdogs of democracy or whatever. Actually good journalist who do expose corruption are few and far between, I think people like Assange or Greenwald or good examples, but most are just social climbers who dont give a shit.
The thing is the fluff piece actually proves this as false. For decades they have advertised a Fluff piece at the end of the news, because that keeps people watching till the end. People only wanted to know about the skateboarding squirrel, or how the firefighter saved a family of hedgehogs. Too much bad news and they stopped watching altogether.
They would not need to manipulate people into watching bad news if that's what people actually wanted.
They may have created a dependency on bad news in our current society, but people didn't get there without intentional manipulation.
And now the internet broke the fluff mechanism. People will just google it during the first commercial break, watch it on youtube, and turn off the news. So the news has to report more and more dire threats to keep viewers hooked.