The hysteria is obnoxious.
Anybody notice that the media seems to have gotten even worse since Trump was inaugurated? I mean, I just stopped looking at CNN.com. I can’t take their stupidity anymore. There’s always like 16 top news stories about how someone or another is offended by Trump or about people who are pissed at Trump. Literally, complete stories devoid of any substance other than anger and outrage.
How about reporting the NEWS. Shit that is happening, facts and boring stuff like that. I don’t care who Trump pisses off or if some actress rants about Trump. That’s their own personal problem. I don’t want to read people’s personal quips. Just the facts ma’am…
This is the kind of shit that is going to get Trump re-elected.
But weirdly in the information era, it’s seems harder and harder to get information, at least accurate information.
The media is owned and run by corporations for the benefit of profit, everything else be damned. When the corporations took over, I don’t know. This is why outlets like The Real News are critical.
Report from a Progressive paper unveiling CIA contract with Amazon for $600BB.
You know - Bezos, the owner of Wapo and breaker of CIA’s uncovering of Russian hacking,
Best line in the article:
Propaganda largely depends on patterns of omission and repetition.
I ran across a post elsewhere that I thought was interesting in regards to media. I would like thoughts on it. I have to say I think it holds a lot of merit, and I think that I agree with his comment on Trump, but the last sentence is far too rosy and optimistic for my tastes.
"The media are a business, not an information resource. Their product is not news but your eyeballs. They sell them to advertisers.
There’s no market for hard news (think city council meetings). So except for one-offs like Princess Di or JFK Jr or the originator of it all Jessica-in-the-well, hard news can’t pay the daily bills.
There’s one market that will tune in every day, news or no news, and that’s the soap opera audience. They’re 20% of the population but that’s big enough to pay the daily bills, so soap opera narratives is what you’ll always get. If something isn’t soap opera, it will be rewritten so that it is, lest the soap opera audience tune away.
That’s a business constant. It can’t change without the media going out of business.
Politicians free-ride on that business necessity, by supplying soap opera narratives for the media to run.
The tastes of soap opera people edit every public debate, as a result. An entertainment choice determines public policy.
The solution is ridicule, so that at least the media don’t any longer have the aura of seriousness that they’ve been trading under.
Trump got elected by demonstrating he could throw sand in the media narrative gearbox, as he continues to do. Perhaps once again actual problems that could not be talked about can show up in public"
4 Likes
Related, to your post, Aragorn. I haven’t read this thread, so maybe someone has already said this. Trump was great for ratings, no doubt about it. I recall reading someone from CNN say as much. It was something like, “He may not have been a good thing for the country, but he was certainly good for our ratings!” The MSM may not have thought he would actually win, but they are certainly partly responsible.
1 Like
Just to add, Puff:
Trump ended up spending a fraction of what Clinton did mostly because of media coverage.
It’s pure economics…each minute of free air time that Trump got, translated into thousands that he didn’t have to spend. During the election; there were few times that he wasn’t the lead story.
As I’ve said previously…when the media benefited him…Trump played them like a fine violin.
2 Likes
Aargon:
To your post.
The daytime demographic is getting harder and harder for the media and advertisers to get a real handle on.
I read somewhere once that in the “peak” of the 70’s and 80’s…there were something like 18-20 Daytime Soaps, and now it is down to (2 or so?)…a huge drop, for sure.
The next “wave” was Talk Shows (whose best days are also behind them).
Is it because of the explosion of entertainment options out there, and the way in which Millennials consume and view content? (That’s part of it, I’m sure).
I do know that Millennials and subsequent generations are not, and will not, be content to sit on a couch and watch Soaps from 10-4…pay $200 plus/month for cable and satellite subscriptions…or to your point, spend time to analyze the truthfulness of a News Feed they subscribe to.
The disruption has just begun.
2 Likes
Sorry…one “last” thing…
Love her or hate her (personally, I think she and Priebus should be credited for saving Trump’s campaign)…I think Kelly Anne Conway’s “Alternative Facts” will not only become an accepted phrase…it will become an apt description of the news and information we are flooded with on almost a minute-to-minute basis.
Even though KAC tried to back-track on it…I think that the phase will become a normal part of our discourse…making it actually somewhat historic.
1 Like
Just speculation, but my guess would be that there just aren’t that many people home during the day anymore. The ole husband works, wife home model is long gone.
Good point…and if they are home…they are not sitting there watching Soaps from 10-4…but are more likely buried into a Smartphone; a computer; or Streaming/Netflixing a favorite show (which they are more than happy to watch when it became available on some streaming service).
1 Like
This is it. It’s driven by supply and demand. People whine about having biased news media, but if people actually wanted just-the-facts media, someone would supply it. Overwhelmingly, people don’t want it - they want news flavored with a confirmation bias.
I think that’s disappointing - people used to demand news in a more objective format (even as highly partisan newspapers have always flourished, and that’s ok too). But now, partisanship invades everything - the shows you watch, the alcoholic beverages you drink, etc. - nothing is immune. And our news consumption has followed in the same pattern.
What’s also interesting is that news outlets still have hard-news components, but studies have shown that people overwhelmingly shoot straight to the news analysis and opinion pages to get their updates on the facts of the situation.
3 Likes
Are they running these news networks for money? With the terrible ratings and huge losses they’re taking how are some of them still around?
You realize the MSM is still widely profitable right? Nearly every prelim report from the end of FY16 showed success across the MSM outlets. Actual published reports out of the parent companies confirm it as well.
Many are not. WaPo, NYT, the Guardian off the top of my head
I’m sure they’re up in the last year due to the election but prior major losses
What you’re thinking of is losses compared to what was expected. From what I’ve seen nearly all of MSM is still very much so in the profitable range.
It is failing as many people now get their news digitally which is only a fraction of the profits of print.
They are failing
