What does the media really sell?

One of the prevalent myths in American culture is that the media – radio, TV, magazines and newspapers, and now some internet sites – exist to tell us the truth. Most of us know the media is biased, though we may disagree on which way it is biased, and yet still, in our heart of hearts, we continue to believe that the media “should” give us accurate information.

In fact, the media sell a product, just like any other profit-making company. The product they sell is “interesting” news. Not accurate news. Not important news. Just “interesting” news – news that will gain and hold readers for their advertisers, who after all are their source of income.

That means that what gets priority in the news system is sensational news, whether it is accurate or not: scandals, revelations, “inside scoops”, disasters, partisan political analyses that will resonate with this or that segment of the audience, intimate details of some celebrity’s life, and the like. Truly important news only gets reported if it also happens to be sensational enough to be “interesting” to the general population.

It also means that everything has to be packaged into bite sized pieces that can be grasped in a few moments by people who really don’t do much thinking. Complex issues (and most important issues are very complex indeed) get boiled down to a few simple one-liners and catchy phrases, and these then becomes the level at which most people think they understand the issue, and on the basis of which they may eventually vote. It’s a little frightening to think that much of this nation’s policy is set on the basis of such oversimplified on-liners, but that is in fact what happens.

So the next time you hear someone get upset about the unfair or inaccurate way the media has portrayed some event, remember that the media is doing exactly what they set out to do – catch and hold readers for their advertisers. They never set out to report the most important news, nor to report it accurately in all its complex detail. And if they did try to do that, they would probably lose most of their audience and hence their income.