Some may think it is irrelevant but I think capitalism plays a role. News are like 90% fucking terrible, horrible news. I really can’t bring myself to watch news. killed… massacred… evil… That’s all the reporters say.
I can watch the goriest movies but when I just as much hear a mother literally threw her baby to dumpster (that’s real and probably happens a lot) I can’t… I can’t continue watching… So sickening. And people watch news with meals? During brekfast? Dinner?
I think news under capitalism focus on the worst points of humanity as bad news sell better than cheering news I imagine. It is also the direct result of capitalism that people are so fucking savage.
Yeah, you grasped it right. Profit is everything. Everything else - irrelevant. People tend to be interested more in stuff that caters to their world view and own ideas.
That’s why the pro-Ukraine propaganda machine is so fucking effective, for example. You paint Ukraine as a bully victim who fights for freedom and democracy (hooorah!) - the regular conersva ass from the Muricah will be cheering for any news praising those fuckers. So all the media sources will follow the same bullshit narrative because it caters to their general audience. I’d say that dialectically we get a perfect machine. By satisfying the needs of already existing fuckers it produces the new ones.
Now, back to the news. Why the hell there are only bad ones? That shit sells. It’s hot. Stories about evil orkz from Russia killing pregnant women - that seems like the usual shit for sale. That shitty courtroom drama going on right now - even better.
Why does it sell? Well. I’m going for some speculation here. But that kind of stuff caters to a lot of people at once in different ways. Some love spicy shit. Some lack spicy shit in their boring day to day lives and like to see something more spicy for a change. Some look at all the creepy shit going on and think “Well, I may have a shitty life but at least there’s no stuff like that”.
I’m certain that this is a cultural thing too. Because here in former Soviet Union countries we have an opposite - news REALLY REALLY REALLY try to stay silent about ANYTHING really substential or negative happening save for cases which can’t be omitted. They do throw in some criminal stuff, but usually we get like “Putin did that, governor in region X where you live did that, rare animals in that zoo did that, children in the school did that” etc. No news about strikes. No news about dozens of factories closing each fucking year. No substential news from the frontlines (hot topic nowadays) apart from shitty daily copy-pasted crap about “uh we destroyed this and that that’s it for today”.
Plus some news are straight up bullshit. Like that funny episode that happened a while before the special operation, the one about “new military drone factory” when they literally put a few random people into a brand new hangar with squeaky-clean floors, a couple of fucking plastic tables with some random tech bullshit on them and then filmed what was supposed to be “an inspection” from some high ranking official. Plus the practice of having actors put out as supposed locals is comedic at best. When you have same fucking people under different names be in Moscow as worried people going out to meet the officials and then suddenly turning up on a nuclear ice breaker in the North as a part of the crew.
Would you tolerate that kind of bullshit in your news knowing that’s all bullshit?