Media in the United States

I stopped watching the news because of the negativity and useless content. The problem is an old one, in the sense that the media reports what they believe will increase viewership, but in doing so creates an imbalance in the coverage. Many unimportant items get reported that shouldn’t be and many important things never get reported.

In the past few years, the situation has gotten significantly worse. There are two reasons for this: the twenty-four hour news and the Internet. A twenty-four hour news cycle requires twenty-four hours of content and there aren’t that many important items to report, so  the media outlets fill the rest of the time with gossip and unless information. Prying into people’s personal lives has become commonplace and there is no privacy anymore.

The Internet has degraded news reporting even further because it has no filter. Anyone can call themselves a journalist (no experience required). This new form of communication competes with traditional media for readership so the old guard lowers its standards to stay relevant.

Because politics in the United States is so polarized, we get a constant stream of news from the ends of the political spectrum and nothing from the middle. This over reporting from the edges makes people think the world is the way the media describes it. Hitler’s propaganda minister once said, “Tell a lie enough times and people will believe it to be the truth.”

Thomas Jefferson said, “The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

I get the news headlines on my phone these days. I use multiple sources to try and void bias, but at least I can decide what’s important without having the media decide for me.