The Real Motives of the Media

I just had a thought.  In fact, it might be a revelation.

As I was reading my third CNN story in a row (with comments), it occurred to me that each one of the stories had been written in such a manner as to inspire indignation and anger in readers.

Having their combustible embers fanned into flame, the commenters did not disappoint. They immediately responded to the stimuli by jumping out from their corners to attack the nearest available target of choice - right-wingers, unionists, religious zealots, minority groups, any number of hated celebrities... their enemy of the moment.

The thing I noticed was that the inflamed rhetoric did not really seem to be the honest responses of real people to real events. No, it seemed contrived. There was too little interaction with the specific facts in one case, an emotional-charged accusation too conveniently trite in another.

What was happening? It seemed like the commenters were taking hold of the news stories for the purpose of spraying prepackaged opinions into the face of a public held in scorn. They were not really talking about facts, because their words were too angry, their emotions too well-developed for one who’d just read the story. They were not commenting on the story… They were throwing partisan tirades at the masses like a terrorist spraying bullets into a crowd.

The fact that hate-filled people lie in wait in the comments section of on line news sources is nothing new. My new realization was how quickly and easily they can jump up to spew their venomous remarks following nearly ANY STORY. So I examined the stories.

I hadn’t noticed it before... I discovered that each of the three stories was less than objective.  Actually, manipulative and unprofessional.  In fact, I found that each story was characterized less by the presentation of facts than by the presentation of a hodgepodge of fact, opinion, and conjecture designed to inspire outrage.

For the first time I realized with great clarity that the more outraged CNN or FOX or MSNBC can get their readers/viewers, the more fanatical their consumer base becomes.

It suddenly occurred to me, in a "eureka" moment, that most of the division in our nation today is due not to real objective fact, not even to informed opinion, but is in fact a mass response to manipulation by the media.
 
Here’s what I overlooked before. When partisan presentation produces more outrage, the usual result is more loyal consumers, and therefore more profits. When they can create more profits by inflaming the rhetoric, the media is going to inflame the rhetoric until we have a conflagration on our hands.

It took me so long to realize this for the same historical reason that the media has been able to amass all this influence in the first place. The reality is - we all tend to trust our media sources. We may not trust all media, but most of us trust our chosen source of information.

So we trust, they spin, we get outraged, we thank them for keeping us aware of the threat, the division among the various parts of the populace grows, the hate swells. Then, of course, we turn to our trusted chosen media source, not only for information but also for validation… and the cycle of disinformation continues.

Orwell’s Ministry of Truth had nothing on these guys.


- Gryphem
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Postscript:

Apparently my original post led some to believe that I am endorsing government intervention into the media. Let me clarify.

• In the first place, for all our shortcomings, I still believe in constitutional government. That means freedom of speech. We the viewers/readers/listeners must exercise GOOD JUDGMENT and DISCRETION in order to prevent ourselves from being manipulated - Not turn to ‘Big Brother’ to arbitrate. Note the literary allusion to Orwell’s 1984 at the end of the original post.

• In the second place, the only thing that might make this worse would be for the government to involve itself in the situation. If that were to happen, we would soon see hatemongering for profit replaced with hatemongering for political purposes. I fear that might be even worse.

- Gryphem