>>14401843yup.
>>14404601it is, but not directly; what they really sell is the attention of their readership to advertisers. this is why the story needs to "sell itself" primarily as an attention grabber rather than an insightful or rigorous way to inform the public
there is a particularly insidious side effect of this: a well-informed public is a threat to your business model, because they would be less likely to seek or require your analysis (and thus provide your publication with attention to sell) - this means that private, for-profit media can never afford to create a well-informed public because doing so would be business suicide. an uninformed public is more easy to attention grab, and easier to attention-grab for longer periods of time with the same story (before becoming too informed about it to continue the exaggerated grift). an informed public sees the grift almost immediately
however, there is good news - the news didn't anticipate the meta-intelligence that is enabled by the internet. humanity has accidentally gone and created a hive mind of meat supercomputers without even realizing it. that, btw, is the real reason news - even online news - is so threatened by "iNtErNeT mIsInFoRmAtIoN cOnSpIrAcIeS". the internet informs itself too quickly to keep up, and it is trending towards a level of ability of informing the public that terrifies businesses that have historically enjoyed (and abused) their de facto cultural position as monopolistic arbiters of truth - the key credential that allows their attention-selling model to work in the first place.
