Having worked in cable news for more than a decade after a wonderfully misspent youth in newspapers, I can tell you the result: a nation of news consumers both overfed and malnourished. Americans gorge themselves daily on empty informational calories, indulging their sugar fixes of self-affirming half-truths and even outright lies.
Can anyone really be surprised that the problem has gotten worse in the last few years?
Bias in the coverage of politics and government is nothing new. Old Erastus Brooks himself was an ardent Whig and frequent candidate for office. What is still relatively new is a marketplace that offers penalties for reporting the news but lots of rewards for indulging a consumer’s worst cravings. Cable news producers work in a world of 15-minute increments in which their superiors can track even tiny changes in viewership.
The rebellion on the populist right against the results of the 2020 election was partly a cynical, knowing effort by political operators and their hype men in the media to steal an election or at least get rich trying. But it was also the tragic consequence of the informational malnourishment so badly afflicting the nation.
When I defended the call for Biden in the Arizona election, I became a target of murderous rage from consumers who were furious at not having their views confirmed.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-01-28/fox-news-chris-stirewalt-firing-arizona