11th
Sadly appropriate given my last post and the fact that the major new outlets couldn’t be bothered to talk about it.
Unfortunately, the central problem isn’t the news companies directly - we have an equal hand in this sadly.
See, the advent of online news meant news providers could now track what articles were being read, and make sure they got larger placement. Unfortunately for people who care about the news, said companies learned quickly that bullshit like this gets readers. Add to that 24-7 competition from news corporations means that a company that doesn’t post things readers want to read will lose share to one that does. This isn’t anything new - Yellow Journalism has been around for a while, it’s just that now they can directly feed back the crap that we hunger for, and as a bonus, keep the names of people who are part of your entertainment wing in the news.
The unwritten rules of corporate media are pretty simple: give people what they want to see. FOX news has made this an art by pretty much catering to the people who swing Republican, making them trusted by 41 percent of the population and distrusted by 48. But their viewers are loyal, because they don’t ever challenge the viewers’ beliefs, and instead work to confirm them.
Nobody in media goes out of business telling people what they want to hear. And our current news situation is based on that principle. We can blame them for giving us this crap, but we’re partly at fault for lapping it up.
(Source: iraffiruse, via lightpriestess)
