
The media is one of the main causes of our collective paralysis.
Democracy requires an informed electorate to function. In today’s divided, profit-hungry media landscape, it’s impossible to know what to believe.
The media isn’t holding up its vital function as “the fourth estate.” Instead, it strokes outrage while ignoring the fundamental issues shaping the world.
The rise of terms like “fake news” or “gotcha journalism” are symptoms of the failure of mass media to accurately present what is happening in the world.
We can’t make progress if we don’t know what’s going on.
The Goals of the Media are in Opposition to the Common Good
Media figures pretend to have our best interests at heart. They pay lip service to educating viewers and readers about issues. And while many might have good intentions, the people who pay their salaries have objectives in total opposition to what most of us want.
The media’s corporate owners:
- Are hell-bent on making us hate each other.
- Want us to live in constant fear.
- Want us to be confused, they don’t want us to trust anything or anybody except for them.
- Want to make us feel insecure to drive the bottomless consumer culture1i.e. Buying stuff will make us feel better..
The Media Lives in Two Opposing, Make-Believe Realities
A primary impediment to us making progress is that the media presents two, and only two, very distorted realities.
The real world (aka “reality”) doesn’t exist in the media (TV, print, or otherwise). Reality passes through two filters that serve only to drive anger. The extrepublicrats on the left and the right live in their bubbles, which the media strengthens every day, and everyone else has to live in a world devoid of facts.
The State of the Media is a Joke
The current state of the media is an absolute disgrace. It’s sad to think that so many people rely on what they hear from the news. It’s riddled with bias, omissions, mistakes, and untruths. The stories being reported on are sensationalized nonsense. The real issues that affect us day to day are completely ignored.
The only thing that the media should be reporting on is relevant topics that provide genuine insight or knowledge—not just click bait or opinion meant to distract and divide us. We need news outlets that are reliable and unbiased if we want to move away from this joke of a state the media currently finds itself in.
Problems Caused by the Broken Media
The media’s total failure to educate the public and devotion to play to our base emotions is causing all kinds of problems across society. Here are some of the biggest negative repercussions of the media’s malfeasance.

Polarization is Largely a Result of the Media
The media loves stoking division. It lives to make us angry and scared. When they play to our emotions we watch more – and see more ads.
The media long ago split into a left and right divide, and now exist in an “echo chamber” where they tell their audience what the audience wants to hear.
The media are simply propaganda arms of the political party they support. Anger drives ratings (and therefore advertising), so getting readers/viewers riled up about “the bad guys” is how media figures move up.
Both “Sides” Are In On It
If you are reading this and saying “yeah, FOX/CNN is really awful…” you are missing the point.
They are all in on it.
They want you to hate the other side.
Truthful reporting… that’s the least of their priorities.
The media sees everything that happens in the world through the prism of “how can we frame this to make the other side look bad.” And of course, ignore/gloss over anything uncomplimentary to their side.
The Media Promotes Simplistic Answers and Ignores Complicated, Nuanced Realities
One of the biggest problems with the media is that it focuses on sensationalism and gossip instead of real news and information. Nuance and complexity aren’t present in mainstream news.

The clear message to anyone on mainstream media that says anything reasonable about the biggest problems – “STOP MAKING SENSE.”
We live in a complex, interrelated world. Most things can’t be easily explained in 30-second clips. Instead of acknowledging this reality, the media promotes easy answers that usually are some version of “the other side sucks.”
Moderation, bipartisanship, cooperation, centrism, moderation, reasonability – they aren’t sexy. Nuance doesn’t drive clicks or keep people tuned in (so that they see ads). Outrage and fear do. The goal is to drive anger and division, not to inform us.
Stories that are critical of corporate interests are ignored, while trivial stories are given front-page attention. This results in a biased and inaccurate portrayal of the world, which has a damaging effect on democracy.
The real world is hard to explain. So instead of doing the hard work of investigative journalism, they just blame the other side.
Local News Isn’t Covered
While federal elections have consequences, it’s at the local level that individual citizens have the most influence. Unfortunately, the media does not help the average citizen understand what is going on in their local communities or at the state level.
As the media consolidated into larger and larger conglomerates by swallowing up local news sources, they realized they could save a ton of money if they just presented the same news across the country. And because all local competition was bought out, there’s no threat that people would go somewhere else to get their news – there isn’t anywhere else!
Why do you know who Mitch McConnel and Nancy Pelosi are, but you (ox many of you) don’t know your senators or representatives? It’s because Pelosi and McConnel stand in for everything their audience hates about the other side. Why spend the resources covering local news in states and cities around the country, when you can use the same national footage everywhere?
Local coverage is all but dead
The national news rules the headlines and local news is all but non-existent. In large part, this is because the local channels are owned by national syndicates, and, of course, reporting at the local level costs money.
And the three companies that own all the local news channels aren’t interested in spending money if they don’t have to.
And of course, as a citizen and consumer, you have more power to affect change at the local level. The last thing corporate ownership wants is regular people getting involved.
John Oliver had a great segment on this. Even if you hate him I highly encourage you to watch.
Bottom line – the country needs more information at the local level, which is sorely lacking now.
Why Is the Media So Broken?
The media’s negative impact on society is clear.
- But why are they acting this way?
- What’s wrong with the media?
- Aren’t newscasters human?
- Don’t they understand what they’re doing?
- Don’t they care about the country?
Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why the media is actively harming society:
The Media is Owned
What we call “the media” is owned by a handful of massive corporations. To some of them, cable channels don’t even need to make money. By driving polarization and keeping us distracted, the return on investment for the conglomerates that own them is incalculable. Their “fake news” stops us from cooperating to address our fundamental problems. It’s a sleight of hand, diverting our attention from what matters.
The media is in the business of selling ads, and they do that by getting us to consume their content. And nothing drives eyeballs like outrage.
The Media Needs Our Attention At All Costs
It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. What matters is that people tune in. That’s how they make money. They don’t care about us as individuals or as a society. All they want is our attention and our money.
Market Forces
While it might be easy to point the finger at cable news or social media, at some level the media is responding to market forces.
the blame lies with all of us. We’re the ones who consume it.
This goes back to the question of why the media act this way. And the answer is simple: because it’s profitable.
The Media’s Focus is On Profits
Television is a business and, like any business, its primary goal is to make money. So it shouldn’t be surprising that media companies are more interested in ratings than in informing the public. Profit is at the core of our national values. It’s all we care about as a society at large. They are free to do what they want, but pretending they are fair and balanced, or that “Democracy Dies In Darkness” – pretending to be doinga pubric service while in reality sowing the seeds of our destruction… That’s not ideal.
They Serve Advertisers, Not the Public
The media’s business model isn’t to sell you anything, it is to sell your attention to advertisers. It might seem like it’s the same thing, but it’s not.
You don’t give your money to the network, you give it to the advertiser. Like always, follow the money.
The media’s job is to help advertisers take your money.
The more money the advertising company gets from you, the more they spend with the media.
The media makes most of its money from a handful of advertisers that dominate marketing.
What Advertisers Sell Is Of Questionable Value
What sectors or products spend the most on advertising? At the most basic level, it’s the sectors with the most money to spend. Pharmaceutical drugs, soda (really anything with sugar and carbs as the main ingredient), beer, insurance, and political ads, these are the biggest advertisers. And I’d argue all of these things have a detrimental impact on society.
One of the many reasons the media is so harmful to society at large.
Anxiety and Fear Drives Action
Drug companies need us to feel like something is wrong with us so that we take their pills.
Billions of dollars are spent on political advertising. By constantly feeding us fear, the media makes us think that erections are life and death contests.

According to the Guardian, Fox News featured violent crime 50 percent more before the 2022 elections compared to after. We can surmise that was not because of a 50 percent drop in actual crime. Fear not only keeps people watching, but is a powerful force in voting decisions.
Corporate Owners Want Us Distracted
When we are fighting about the little things we disagree on, we lose focus on the systemic issues at the root of so many of our problems. Corporate media manipulation is about getting us to be so caught up in media and sensationalism that we miss the real problems.
Nobody cares about the Kardashians or Kanye West. But the media superficially cover mundane events and underreport or ignore what is important. We can watch E! or Entertainment Tonight if we wanted gossip. That’s not why we watch the nightly news or CNN2Or am I naive, is that what we want? I just can’t believe that.
Less than 6 percent of the population uses Twitter. Yet they talk about it all day long. If you let a politician off with a 144-character tweet you are not doing your job!
Regurgitating a tweet is not journalism.
It Focuses on Political Division at the National Level – While State and Local Issues are Ignored
Think of the media as trying to tell a story to as many people as possible, they need villains and heroes (although it’s been a lot more villains they concentrate on lately). So they constantly talk about people like McConnel and Pelosi, yes because they are powerful, but also because they can resonate with everyone in the country. It’s almost like the sole reason they are in the powerful positions they are in is because they can be used to inflate the anger of the other side. Because they are so easy to hate.
If Fox or MSNBC started talking about your representatives, the rest of the country would tune out. There’s only space for so many players.
Talking Heads are Actors, Not Journalists
Yes, most people in the news are good, even the ones working in the media. But they aren’t the ones that get promoted. The system is set up to select the ones who will go along with anything. The ones that are so in love with themselves that all that matters is that people are watching them.
What do they actually say?
They could care less.
Newscasters are actors reading from a screen with words someone else wrote. If I’m being generous I’d say they are entertainers.
They are not journalists.
They are lazy
Another reason news is so bad comes back to human nature. The media is staffed by lazy people3I’ll be the first to admit I’m very lazy myself . Doing the hard work of understanding a complicated world and explaining it to us is too much work! If a “journalist” can get away with regurgitating a tweet, or just explaining how horrible the other side is again, why wouldn’t they?
If we are going to watch regardless… Why would they work hard?
We All Share the Blame for the Media’s Failures
Ok. Maybe not you specifically (although.. are you sure?) But certainly we as a society. We have allowed this to happen. The media is a mirror that reflects what we want to see.
We could change it, but that would require work. And who wants to do that?
It’s much easier just to consume the media they give us and complain about how bad it is. Or be distracted by something else. That way we can stay angry and distracted, complaining ad-nauseam, and never have to do the hard work of actually making a difference.
Human Biology and the Echo Chamber
Most of the audience wants to have their way of thinking reinforced. They don’t want their convictions challenged – it hurts their ego.
Human biology wants to protect itself, and that means protecting the ego as well. Our baser instincts want us to think we know everything. But we don’t. As adults, we need to challenge our assumptions and understand that other people see things differently. That is how growth and progress happen.
But the media doesn’t want that, and perhaps the majority of us don’t either (despite what we say publically, or think we think).
Division, Anger, and Fear Drive Ratings
After decades of conditioning, what people mostly want to hear is that they are right, and the other side is wrong.
Whatever party they favor is blameless, and the other side is 100 percent responsible for all the problems in society. Not surprisingly, this is also how politicians present reality.
But you can’t put all the blame on the media types. If you tell people things they don’t want to hear, they are liable to go somewhere else.
The current state of the media is a joke and it’s causing America to fall behind. We need more unbiased journalists who report on reality.
Help Save America – Support True Journalism
And ignore the rest!
When the news and facts are constantly being distorted and manipulated to fit the interests of the few, it’s paramount for citizens to stand up for truth and justice.
We must take action to preserve our democracy. It is only through objective truth that our democracy can endure. We must have faith in real journalism to protect and preserve our freedoms. If every American backed unbiased journalism, we could be well on our way to building a better world.
Help save America by supporting unbiased journalism, or better yet, become a journalist!
Reforming the Media is Possible

But despite all these problems with the media, we can’t just give up.
Reform is possible. If the media can be more transparent and accountable, then perhaps we’ll begin to trust it again. If we demand a focus on progress instead of anger, then maybe we can start to heal the divisions that have been created by this toxic environment.
But it’s going to take a lot of work to reform the media.
So this article was all about the problem of the media, but don’t abandon all hope yet.
Like everything on this site, there are ways to make things Less Bad.
We can bring back real news.