1. There isn't a single media (often, when your tribe is against another, you view the opposition as monolithic rather than a spectrum composed of different viewpoints)
2. And they're not insane, editors and social media algorithms are rational and reacting to reader incentives (but it is "insane" to mistake media sources for a rational human, because most media is about covering extreme events[1])
More in my media literacy guide:
https://github.com/nemild/hack-the-media/blob/master/README....
[1] The deaths that are most covered are a tiny fraction (<1%) of the way we die https://www.nemil.com/s/part3-horror-films.html
The overwhelming majority of the media that people consume in the U.S. is created by the same handful of companies, which each have roughly the same rules about what kinds of stories you're allowed or not allowed to publish. Having worked at one, I can assure you that you're not just allowed to publish whatever you want as long as it conforms to basic journalistic standards or whatever.
Separately, you note the high concentration of media creation, but don't speak to the even higher concentration of media distribution (e.g., social media), which likely has its own influence on what is created.
It's been 10+ years since I've read chapter 1 of Manufacturing Consent, but IIRC the basic argument is that:
- Media companies are the way they are because they're funded by advertising.
- Media companies have an oligopoly because they are allowed to fund themselves via advertising, and advertising has monopolies of scale.
> you note the high concentration of media creation, but don't speak to the even higher concentration of media distribution, which likely has its own influence on what is created.
That's a good point. The fact that media companies own less of their own distribution is probably the biggest thing that's changed since Manufacturing Consent was originally published, so now institutional incentives need to be considered across two different dimensions.
Should this be surprising? A newspaper isn’t a blog for a bunch of journalists, it’s an organization that makes a collective effort to speak with a single authoritative voice.
That’s a far cry from all newspapers sharing an institutional perspective, though.
But to the degree that an ad driven model and social media is the primary way news distribution happens, media incentives are monolithic for media organizations.
On a discursive note, if you are interested in media incentives, "All the News That's Fit to Sell" is a great book that goes into media incentives in previous eras. When the economies of scale for printing presses went up, media naturally became more centrist and less alarmist because a single paper had to appeal to a larger audience. It gives you a sense for the power of incentives in dictating what media is created/distributed.
The one thing we can’t criticize our media for is a lack of diversity.
Fearmongering is the go-to default for absolutely every issue the media covers. Then during an actual literal pandemic they take a short break from every other the-world-is-ending story to give us the "don't fearmonger" lecture.
If you ever find yourself split in doubt between your own sanity and that of the media's, please for the love of God assume they're insane first.