Page 1 of 1
Newspapers feeding the "crisis"
Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 4:57 pm
by Mr. Oragahn
I don't know how it goes in the US, but in Europe, it seems that all newspapers are stuck in a race about who gets the most frightening headlines about how the end is nigh, money burns and Earth flattens.
Just... please. Couldn't they just shut the hell up?
Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2008 3:42 pm
by Praeothmin
But then, they wouldn't sell papers...
And they sell papers with such headlines because... the masses buy them.
The Human being in general is a voyeuristic, sensationalistic being, who thrives on high impact news, and as soon as a newspaper talks about, say, a bombing, the voyeuristic nature of the beast comes out, and that paper sells like hotcakes.
Since newspapers are in it for the money, they will print whatever sells the most papers... Unfortunately...
Re: Newspapers feeding the "crisis"
Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 4:39 am
by 2046
Mr. Oragahn wrote:I don't know how it goes in the US, but in Europe, it seems that all newspapers are stuck in a race about who gets the most frightening headlines about how the end is nigh, money burns and Earth flattens.
Just... please. Couldn't they just shut the hell up?
In the US this has been the case the entire time with the entire media. For instance, we've supposedly been in a recession for the last few quarters, even though we haven't in reality.
Media sensationalism does not explain this adequately. For instance, we were in a recession in the third quarter of 2000 while Clinton was in office, but this went largely ignored. Based on GDP, that recessive quarter was over twice as bad as the last quarter of 2007 (which wasn't even known to be a recession at the time, IIRC), but even as early as then the media was trying to report that it was the end of the world and we were all going to hell.