Wow.
I totally agree with mgh. I have to imagine someone could have written something similar about MSNBC as well.
That being said, I had contemplated this for a while now, with a lot of confirmation coming from behavior I had seen everywhere: in my family, on this board, and out in society as a whole. It's a perfect storm of unbridled capitalism, power-grabbing, influence and human nature. The media companies have become bottom-line driven over anything else, including objective truth conveyance. That is driven by maintaining ratings. That is driven by ensuring you have a captive audience. Nothing captivates people like fear, resentment, and anger (words he actually used). These are survival instincts. They are stronger than any rational, homo-sapien evolved logic. Think about it. We're not rational or logical when we're angry or afraid. We're also less intelligent in those states. We're captivated.
1+1=2 in that scenario. The media companies realized that inducing fear and anger would help their bottom lines. The anchors are totally fine with it because it increases their own bottom lines and influence. What they don't seem to care about is when you induce that much fear and anger, societal unrest is also a logically following step. It also opens up foreign adversaries to employ the same exploitations. Things can get out of hand fast.
Next thing you know, the demagogues come along and try to take advantage of that fearful and angry social dynamic for their own powerful gains, but the public doesn't even realize it, because they're too reinforced in their anger and fear to think logically about what's happening.
And, well, here we are.
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