unitednations
In the late 1980s and 1990s, the world began to see a decline in hard news and an increase of infotainment like The Oprah Winfrey Show, Entertainment Tonight, The Daily Show, and The View. The 2000s brought about even more. Slowly, our news became infiltrated with entertainment, scandal, and sensationalism. Now, it is at its peak and creating chaos in our society. What we have now is a corporatocracy, instead of one based on traditional values, like family.
Our news media is a business, and as such, the goal is to make money. The goal is to grow a crowd., keep you interested, keep you buying, and keep you coming back for more. They do this by using aesthetic visuals, catchy titles, and glamorized anchors. In an effort to keep your attention they compete against other news media groups to show you even more extreme and attention-catching news.
News networks are expensive to run. Advertising, celebrity sized salaries. Lest we forget Megyn Kelly had a $69M contract with NBC. The disgraced, former anchor, Matt Lauer had an annual salary of $25M. I have listed a few others below:
Sean Hannity – $40M
Anderson Cooper – $12M
George Stephanopoulos – $15M
Robin Roberts – $18M
It is no wonder “fake news” has become so prevalent. The digital age has forced news media groups to stream constantly, regularly post on websites and apps, all while ensuring they the most interesting headline and content. The pressure to sensationalize information is greater than ever before. It brings in the big bucks.
Infotainment is defined as “broadcast material which is intended both to entertain and to inform.”
And, they are good at it, because these businesses have been in the entertainment business for years.
Notable news networks like CNN, ABC News, and CBS News are owned by huge entertainment conglomerates like Disney, National Amusements, and WarnerMedia.
These groups have created powerful tools of persuasion. Instead of feeding you the hard news, they feed you what you crave-scandal and emotionally charged content. It has also become a powerful tool of control.
Our news media has the power to influence large groups of people, nations even by utilizing several methods.
Distract attention from key events
Create social disorder, ie: elevate racial tensions and disintegrate family values
Shape public opinion by manipulating your perceptions. Media focuses on certain headlines, videos, comments, etc to make you think a certain way, ie: showing you negative images of other nations, only showing videos and articles regarding white on black violence, misleading facts and figures regarding illness (COVID)
Normalize violence
Fear of social isolation. Journalists, bloggers, and the general population fear that if they challenge the status quote they will be rejected
Who are the actors acting as the puppeteers? The owners of these entertainment conglomerates? The political system funneling money to these groups to press their agenda? A group of billionaires with aspirations to rule the world?
It is evident there are actors in play working diligently to disrupt our social, political, and economic structure through the use of media. Unfortunately, the roots are being planted and spreading and negatively impacting our society. These are only a few of the impacts already apparent:
Uninformed public
Mental health issues created by mass consumption of negative news
Lack of good ideas
Final Thoughts
The manipulation of the masses by the use of news media is not unprecedented, but what is unprecedented is the scale to which the impact reaches. What can we do to take back our society? What can you do to be a better consumer of news media? I would like to think it all boils down to education and strong family values, but I don’t know. I’m all ears.