Dwight is too 'Schrude' to blindly trust TV news
No, you should not trust today’s TV news.
Unlike plenty of other businesses, mass media ‘news’ has the ability to drum up more business almost at will.
What they want is more eyeballs (&/or ear holes) watching the advertisements that pay for the programs and that also line the pockets of their shareholders and executives.
They can get more eyeballs by increasing the ‘drama factor’ — you might know this by the terms sensationalism, yellow journalism, celebrity culture, ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ and so forth.
Once upon a time, the news networks were considered a public service — a service to the public to partially compensate us for them getting to use our public airwaves. In the last 30 years though, that model has fallen by the wayside. News is no longer a public service, it’s a profit center. I encourage anyone interested in this to read anything by Robert McChesney.
News-for-profit has driven journalism standards down and seen the rise of infotainment, almost in the complete stead of actual, kinda boring, hard news.
Well, so what. Why would this matter to people following democratic politics?
If you pay attention, you can see and understand the media manipulating the news in order to tell the story they want to tell, which is the story that will increase their ratings and put more green (money) in their blue (jeans).
Based on the coverage, I see that the media wants the general election to be Clinton vs. Trump. That’s the story they think will get them the most eyeballs and the most moolah. Other candidates will have an uphill climb to get much attention in this scenario.
If you don’t want to believe that this kind of manipulation happens, is happening, then bless your naive heart. I would sell you a bridge, but unlike TV news, I still have ethics.
This is not conspiracy theory; this is just cold, hard economics in what we’ve come to understand is a democratic republic in name only, but an oligarchy in practice and outcome.
(There are few media outlets that I trust without qualification. ProPublica is one. Other than that, I trust a few social justice organizations like The Innocence Project. I mostly but not completely trust The Guardian, a UK paper. Bottom line, if you’re a Clinton or a Trump supporter, you should know that the TV news has its thumb on the scale in your candidate’s favor — to get to the general. Should that give you pause? I would hope so, but ultimately we each make our own choices.)
