Purple-Ink & Other Underreported Successes
“Conflict outweighs progress in the news value rating we’ve all learned about in journalism class and that’s a hard nut to crack.”
Commercial bias: The news media are money-making businesses. As such, they must deliver a good product to their customers to make a profit. The customers of the news media are advertisers. The most important product the news media delivers to its customers are readers or viewers. Good is defined in numbers and quality of readers or viewers. The news media are biased toward conflict (re: bad news and narrative biases below) because conflict draws readers and viewers. Harmony is boring.
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Bad news bias: Good news is boring (and probably does not photograph well, either). This bias makes the world look like a more dangerous place than it really is. Plus, this bias makes politicians look far more crooked than they really are.
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Bad news bias: Good news is boring (and probably does not photograph well, either). This bias makes the world look like a more dangerous place than it really is. Plus, this bias makes politicians look far more crooked than they really are.
We get the government we deserve? Maybe. But we CERTAINLY get the media we deserve. For all the talk about the "higher calling" of news reporting, the companies that own the reporters are in it to make money. We vote for our news with our dollars.
In a commercial media system, the advertiser is king. It's even better to be king during a recession, when the sponsors whose dollars media rely on are able to push for better deals: product placement, extensive promotional packages, etc. Outlets looking for corporate support come up with plans of their own that may be lucrative but hardly seem journalistic.
