How the Media's Addiction to Bad News Hurts Dems

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David Roberts
@drvolts
Good point from @danpfeiffer: the media's overwhelming bias toward negativity (which is inevitable in profit-driven media) amounts to a persistent bias against Dems, who need the public to understand that gov't can (& sometimes does) work.

How the Media's Addiction to Bad News Hurts Dems
Earlier this fall, cable news, Twitter, and much of the media were engulfed in a moral panic about the supply chain. The pandemic-related delays in the manufacture and delivery of certain products...
messagebox.substack.com
1:49 PM · Jan 3, 2022

https://messagebox.substack.com/p/how-the-medias-addiction-to-bad-news

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Many of you will read this and want to scream about the greed and irresponsibility of the media. I could hardly blame you, but that anger also reveals a fundamental misconception about the media that is shared by so many Democrats.

While a lot of journalism serves the public, it is not a public service. At the end of the day, journalism is a business. Whether it’s CNN, the New York Times, or your local newspaper (if you still have one), the primary function of these organizations is to make money. If they don’t, they layoff reporters and do less journalism. This is a problem greatly exacerbated by the fact that many of our major media outlets are subsidiaries of giant corporations like Disney, Comcast, and Viacom.

It’s easy to blame the media outlets, but these are stories the public wants to read. A restaurant that served people what they should eat, not what they want to eat wouldn’t survive very long. Using this logic, it’s no wonder most media outlets focus on what people want to read, not what they should read.

As a society, we can’t simultaneously bemoan all the media jobs lost and outlets shuttered AND complain about clickbait journalism. The financial incentives of the Facebook-dominated Internet ecosystem are perverse, yet immense. Up until the moment some smart person comes up with a new, more sustainable business model for journalism, clicks are going to be a primary driver for the decisions made in newsrooms. Is that ideal? No. Is it good for democracy? Hell no. Is that the reality for the foreseeable future? Absolutely. The media will continue to focus on crises, real and imagined. Even the most minor problems will be turned up to an eleven, but that’s what we want and its how they get paid.

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