The industry becomes debased as advertisement becomes its exclusive revenue source. In the old days, newspapers had income from a) subscription fees; b) classif

The industry becomes debased as advertisement becomes its exclusive revenue source. In the old days, newspapers had income from a) subscription fees; b) classified sections; and c) commercial advertisers. This diversification allowed the papers to prioritize the interests of the subscribers, who were paying real money to the paper because they relied on it to have accurate and timely content. In a world where commercial advertisers are the only source of income (because no one will pay subscription fees anymore, and classified sections are obsolete), it's all about viewership, all about eyeballs. You get eyeballs by making outrageous claims and exaggerations (and engaging in other methods to exploit the subconscious processes of the human mind). You can then return to your advertisers and say "Look, I got 20k pageviews for that article yesterday, and all 20k saw your ad. Keep paying and I can make it happen again tomorrow." For this reason, highly-polarizing or controversial pieces are extremely common. The media outlets have profit incentive to get two or more large groups at each others' throats, because it means each party is watching their content more often and more intently, which means when a disaster primarily of their own making occurs, they can go back to advertisers and say "We had a record month in June!", excluding the further explanation "because so many people died in violent ways, occasionally because of the false information we reported to get more viewers". We have to make it so that viewership stops being the most important thing. People are too easy to exploit and hijack for the most-viewed to be a good source. Most often, the most heavily viewed articles will be extremely controversial and will get tons of people who agree coming to bask in the glory of self-congratulation and tons who almost-violently disagree coming to pick apart the arguments and seek ammunition for counterpoints. Both sides see ads when they do this, which means more revenue for the publisher, which means more incentive to produce divisive content. We need to find a way to fix the perverse incentives in media. As long as its eyeballs-first, it's going to be a circus, because circuses draw attention.