zlacker

>>giulio+(OP)
I'd like to see similar study about the original gateway drug: "24-hour News Channels", which was followed by "24-hour Outrage-News Channels". Seems like we've been building toward this, the interactivity of the internet was the paradigm shift (to use a 90's term). EDIT: I realize it isn't news messing with youths' self-esteem (well, in some cases it is), but it is related in that the media is custom-made to drive engagement at all costs.

>>sbf501+qh
My father in law, who suffers from parkinson's calls me several times a day to leave me voice mails about how terrible the world is and how scared he is about what is coming.

If there's a hell I hope there is a special place for 24-hour news channels and folks who feed fear and skewed garbage to people and hurt them.

I sometimes wish I could run a 24 hour news channel that tried to do more of a mix of content / etc. It might not be popular, or profitable, but it wouldn't be doom and gloom and conflict and bait all day. Maybe some stories about rando people's lives and other things?

>>duxup+QA
You'd go out of business.

I'm not dismissing malice or opportunism in the media, but it is also important to appreciate the situation mass news media is in. Mass media are extremely dependent on things like advertising and that's always been the case for as long mass media have existed. The price of subscription or buying a paper is simply too meager to cover the costs of running a paper, for example. Advertising introduces its own perverse incentives and limitations (you can't bite the hand that feeds you, for example).

24 hour news are, for the most part, useless, so they've got to fill the air time with sensationalized garbage, and because there's an arms race, the sensantionalism escalates.

>>lo_zam+kM
The only FTA 24 hour news channel we have in Australia is government funded, no advertising. Not sure if its existence helps prevent the proliferation of the sorts of channels that seem to exist in the US, though it hardly has any significant viewer numbers.