4 ms·
The media are responding to their own incentives, you might as well pass the blame again onto the readers/watchers. It's a structural problem, no one group is t
by Brakenshire 9y ago
The media are responding to their own incentives, you might as well pass the blame again onto the readers/watchers. It's a structural problem, no one group is to blame. I'd say one major factor is the US seems to be mostly devoid of a shame/duty based culture. People need to be driven to act within generalizable moral codes across the whole society. The idea that if the market supports it and it is within the law then it is beyond criticism is in my opinion not sustainable.
- narrator 9y agoThe newspaper business has been losing a lot of money lately. They are just turning into toys for people who want to set the national agenda. Their value as propaganda and PR outlets vastly outweighs their value as subscription collecting or advertising venues. Advertisers will overpay for ads to get a good PR story anyway and with the enormous Web of interlocking ownership these days it's pretty easy to hide the connections.
- anigbrowl 9y agoYeah but this isn't a new problem, I remember the whole Polly Klaas thing well, and if you look into history it's abundantly clear that this sort of sensationalism has long been a fixture of media. I was visiting the Museum of Oakland not too long ago and was struck by a letter written in the 19th century from a new arrival observing that 'the canard [a french term for a bullshit news article] is a fixture in American journalism...' I'm not ascribing all responsibility to the media, though - it's one factor among many. I somewhat agree with the poster above about the US not having the same sort of shame/duty culture that prevails in the EU, and suggest that to some extent this derives from the coincidence of different philosophical and social cultural traditions in the US.