News used to serve a very necessary purpose. People simply didn't get much information and the news was a very necessary way to learn what was happening in the world around you. But times change. Now we live in the information age. People are constantly bombarded by information, so much that they can't even process it, myself included. The news media simply had no hope.
So they executed a strategy that absolutely succeeded in the short term: reporting to induce mass hysteria. Covid is the worst pandemic ever, Trump destroyed the entire country, the US is a fundamentally racist and awful country that must die, etc. As I said, they succeeded in the short term to boost revenues, but the truth is that it was all mostly bullshit. And this strategy could only work once. Most things the news reports are just idiotic bullshit or opinions of people who don't matter, and people en masse are recognizing this.
So yeah, I think this was inevitable. In the words of CBS president Les Moonves, the whole shift was "bad for the country, good for [CBS's] business". I definitely agree that the modern clickbait news is bad for the country, and I am not a shareholder of CBS, so I personally celebrate the collapse of trust in news and can't wait for it to completely die and for the new grassroots era of information to take hold (but I do dread the impact of deepfakes and the like).
We see similar approaches with social media. Fear and anger drive engagement, and engagement creates more ad revenue. I point this out whenever anybody expresses outrage to me over something they read off social media.
Why would grassroots journalism be more trustworthy? More people with no oversight or consequences?
The amount of money spent on some research stories is tremendous how will grass roots journalists be able to do that
The news was the only thing capable of pointing out corruption in business and politics. It was perfect, it didn't always work, sometimes they lied, and many had an agenda. Now it isn't trusted. Guss who will benefit.
News used to serve a very necessary purpose. People simply didn't get much information and the news was a very necessary way to learn what was happening in the world around you. But times change. Now we live in the information age. People are constantly bombarded by information, so much that they can't even process it, myself included. The news media simply had no hope.
So they executed a strategy that absolutely succeeded in the short term: reporting to induce mass hysteria. Covid is the worst pandemic ever, Trump destroyed the entire country, the US is a fundamentally racist and awful country that must die, etc. As I said, they succeeded in the short term to boost revenues, but the truth is that it was all mostly bullshit. And this strategy could only work once. Most things the news reports are just idiotic bullshit or opinions of people who don't matter, and people en masse are recognizing this.
So yeah, I think this was inevitable. In the words of CBS president Les Moonves, the whole shift was "bad for the country, good for [CBS's] business". I definitely agree that the modern clickbait news is bad for the country, and I am not a shareholder of CBS, so I personally celebrate the collapse of trust in news and can't wait for it to completely die and for the new grassroots era of information to take hold (but I do dread the impact of deepfakes and the like).