Member-only story

None Of The News That’s Unwise To Print

How paychecks outweigh social responsibility 100% of the time

Allan Milne Lees
8 min readSep 7, 2020
Image credit: BlastofWinter

Many people naively imagine that what they see or read in “the news” is a moderately accurate reflection of reality.

Many people, of course, also believe the universe was made by and continues to be controlled by a magic pixie.

Beliefs are a very unreliable guide to reality.

All the “news” we consume is the end-product of a constant battle for attention. Most news organizations, whether print or television or streamed video, rely absolutely on grabbing eyeballs for a moment or two during which time ads can be served. Sure, there are subscription-based models but even they rely heavily on advertising to make ends meet. So any “news” organization not grabbing eyeballs with sufficient ferocity will rapidly cease to exist. This is a Darwinian struggle and the survivors have learned how to grab our eyeballs with consummate professionalism.

Even State-funded organizations must compete in the marketplace for attention in order to justify the enormous subsidies that keep them afloat. Thus they too end up looking and behaving just like every other “news” organization.

Editors know their audiences, whether right-wing dullards or left-wing hysterics. And no…

--

--

Allan Milne Lees
Allan Milne Lees

Written by Allan Milne Lees

Anyone who enjoys my articles here on Medium may be interested in my books Why Democracy Failed and The Praying Ape, both available from Amazon.

Responses (1)