I think the product that the news media sells these days—when it’s doing its BEST—is outrage. It doesn’t particularly matter whether the product is valid, as long as the reader feels righteously outraged about something they can justify to themselves should cause them to feel righteously outraged. The only thing that I can figure is that:
1. People don’t have enough that they can actually fix or solve about society on a regular basis.
2. Righteous outrage is a better emotional state than the majority of readers are experiencing on a regular basis.
The pattern in the media often looks something like this:
Step 1: A committee in the government makes Flargles illegal. Almost no member of the population has any idea what Flargles are, but this committee’s job has to do with Flargles so they make a decision about it.
Step 2: Wait many years.
Step 3: A small group of people who are negatively affected by this law attempt to repeal this law against Flargles. This law is still understood only by a few people.
Step 4: Somebody runs a media campaign saying how terrible Flargles are. They hurt poor people and they violate your basic human rights. Nobody knows what Flargles are, still, but now they are all HUGELY opposed to Flargles, because if you support Flargles then you hate poor people and human rights, obviously.
Step 5: Law against Flargles gets repealed by the committee responsible for regulating Flargles (one of the only groups that understands what Flargles are).
Step 6: Run PR campaign against repealers of Flargles law. They hate poor people and human rights.
But what’s really happening here? Well, I think what’s happening is that some desperate media conglomerate gets to stay alive for a few more months. Then they have to find some other story about something that nobody understands but about which you can create enough public outcry to sell a lot of advertising.
-Max
Max Kanat-Alexander 