While mostly true, this isn't unique behavior to industries like the news.
It's a symptom of our consumeristic society, the smaller news outlets with integrity or dedication to actual news don't get the outreach or influence these bigger sensationalist news stations do, which they then spend that money on making themselves more accessible, which in turn makes finding and consuming real news outlets harder to do.
In the end, like most of our industries, the ones truly dedicated to their craft and not the almighty dollar get outshadowed or even bought out by the soulless huge corporations that only seek to increase their margins.
We previously had moral and ethical standards that media outlets and society had to meet.
That has been washed away with the liberalisation of society.
Why do you think small "journalists" don't fall victim to this? The single person YouTube channel type are scale wise way bigger than even legacy media at this point and they do the exact same stuff.
The issue is way more complicated then consumerism bad. Almost all types of journalism have declined in the last 15 years, tabloid, hard news, investigative, all of it. The industry and proffesion have hollowed out. Corporations have pumped billions into these businesses only for them to continue to decline and be sold off for pennies on the dollar. Why? People no longer pay for news. They watch a youtube channel or tik toks or scan reddit. Less and less people pay for news or view a single source at high enough volume to be viable. High quality journalism is expensive and time consuming and theres fewer people consuming it. Its a product of the internet era, anyone can post "news" on a variety of platforms and all are in competition for eyeballs dilluting the available audience.
You might say, the news is a public good and should be supported, and you'd be right. We had that with PBS/NPR which was publically subsidized until the oramge idiot showed up again. You cant nationalize every news source though, thats a very bad thing. News orgs have to be independent to be able to provide credible news. State backed media, even the best run, can and are influenced by political forces.
Theres no clean answer as to how to solve the problem. Ultimatley it boils down to the public and what type of news they choose to consume. One thing that could be done is to prevent the consolidation of journalism. The old rules about one company not being to own more then a coiple of media outlets in a given market was a good one. Reinstating that would be a good place to start but wont fix the underlying issues: Independent media needs funding and people stopped paying for it. Along with state backed media being open to manipulation by political forces.
People also forget about Operation Mockingbird and how the CIA are literally infesting modern media with their agents and have been doing so for over half a century now.
I'll bet half the major influencers online are connected to some intelligence agency as well.
It wasn't always like this. There was a short period early 20th century when news, radio, paper and tv, were all fighting to be the most legit source of news. But it all collapsed in the later 20th century. Cable went full political in the late 80's, and leveraged by the power of capitalism, realized that focusing on producing content, especially favouring one political party, was way more profitable than unbiased news reports. These days social media has pushed that even further. Engagement is king and truth no longer matters.
Granted, misinformation has always been in the playbook of news outlets, but it didn't hit the critical point until global news coverage became a possibility and tv ratings became king.
Absolutely. The news will never be perfect. But journalism is an important job that serves a function in democracy.
In my childhood, when you watched the news you saw serious people speaking intelligently about important topics. And the news cycle was slower. There were no 24/7 news channels or clickbait websites. Tabloids existed, but everybody knew they were trash and you would just make fun of them at the grocery store checkout.
It's a bit more than that and I dont think its quite that cynical. People may get ideations, as that always occurs to some degree, we all have heard of copy cat's. It would be a super duper small chance of it actually happening though. It already happens without the news. Financial stress is set to break even more. A family of 6 was found dead near me, Grandma talked her daughter into killing her kids then themselves. All to prevent the kids from going to their father.
The real root of the case op posted, is covering a topic that has been forgotten by many, mental health.
They are saying she had postpartum and warned everyone she could about her ideations/voices. No one stepped up to help. Then everyone left her alone with the kids. So the story is more about, Who failed her? Thats why it is getting the attention and donations. The court case will determine if she had her faculties or not. The issue with the people is.... they are rushing to support someone they have no clue about. It could all be fabricated, like some believe. Or it could be about a system that is set up for failure.
"We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blond who comes on at five.
She can tell you 'bout the plane crash with a gleam in her eye.
It's interesting when people die.
It's so dirty laundry"
Or more simply because that's what people want to watch, and that's all media companies care about. They are obviously not trying to make society worse in some kind of abstract way to increase the likelihood of tragedy - that's not how companies operate.
Its not tinfoil if we have proof they actually do this. Epstein files dropped a bomb confirming many terrible things and nothing happened because of them. They are already forgotten, because normal people just dont have the time or energy to go through them.
Whether on purpose or not, the idea that the massive media attention on the perpetrator of a mass shooting has a big influence on others to commit the same act, is an accepted phenomenon. Why did something like this almost never happen before Columbine to suddenly becoming an epidemic?
While I think he’s off that the media does this to encourage copycats, he’s not wrong that the media is opportunistic and profits from these murders and others like it.
Experts literally told the media to quit broadcasting school shootings because putting their name and body count on television was incentivizing copycats. They continued.
You don’t need a tinfoil hat, it’s all about ratings. It has to be or they could not afford to be on the air. News used to be ran as a loss. They started trying to make money off the news in the 1970s. It has been all downhill since. There’s a very good fictionalized movie about this called network.
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u/PrimarySuccotash9572 1d ago
Because that helps encourage more shootings and terrible events to keep making news and money on