The news saying used to be “If it bleeds, it leads,” meaning that people like learning about violence and will probably read that story first anyway, so we might as well start off with the bloody stuff. This is why your local TV news broadcast is really just a crime report and the weather. Not a new concept, but one that we’ve now pumped up, smoothed out and extended to the point that it’s now really just “If it’s going to piss people off to the point that they’ll keep coming back…unless they go out and murder strangers…but only roughly 4% do that, so damn the consequences, let’s just piss them all off.”
For real, that’s what internet news is now, just a surefire and steady method for pissing you off. It’s gotten so pointed and so gossipy that it’s not discernibly different from how mean girls operate in high schools. “That stupid bitch, _____, said that _____ wanted to _____, inside the _____, she was pretty drunk, but isn’t she always? And she’s so dumb that she didn’t realize that _____ was sitting right there. God, I hate that slut, don’t you?”
This “journalistic” Mad Libs really could be a text message (but with punctuation) from one nubile cheerleader to another OR what passes for modern political journalism. Just fill in your least favorite senator’s name. It works. Sad, but true.
I guess we, the ill-informed public, are partially to blame for this, but we should shoulder only about 10% of the blame. If they wrote higher-minded stuff, we’d probably read it. At least some of the reason we read “news” isn’t to learn malicious gossip, it’s about being informed, or at the bare minimum about being able to think we’re informed.
If you’re one of those intransigent idiots who really thinks your political party is good and the other one is bad, then you really are the problem. And they, the pretend journalists of the day, know how thirsty you are for your daily dose of mean girl action. It’s just basic supply and demand.
What does knowing about the latest inconsequential “gotcha” moment from one party to the other do to enhance your life? Other than feeding our ravenous delusion, I’d say nothing, nothing whatsoever. But, since they never tell us what’s really going on anyway, I suppose it’s better than just admitting how stupid the politicians think we are.