Breaking News, Breaking Trust

News on cable television is a business. It’s ratings (audience) that fund the operation of a cable network not the civics lesson. Cable television has to create an entertaining environment in order for it to attract and retain its audience; therefore, it creates a unique blend of entertainment and news by using dramatic visual effects, opposing viewpoints from panelists, "breaking news" banners, and emotional commentaries. The model created by this approach is referred to as "infotainment." Infotainment is a style of journalism where the focus is placed on creating conflict rather than providing complexity. In addition to focusing on complex issues and policy proposals, journalists often focus on the scandalous behavior of politicians, their "gaffes," and the "winning" candidate. In doing so, voters become less educated about the workings of government and more invested in their local "political teams." Journalist Thomas Patterson state...

  Algorithms on social media create an environment where all you will find are things that validate your views so you will engage with it. Because of this you don't come into contact with differing opinions. Any differing opinion seems like a rant from someone who is either angry at you for your views or someone who is just plain crazy. The reason for this is that the differing opinion comes from an extreme community that the algorithm found when it was searching for "opinion" in relation to your views. This leads to Affective Polarization: a growing intolerance for opposing political identities. Social media algorithms reward anger and certainly over anything else. For example, the post that causes outrage gets more views than the post that explains how a bill works. So, the algorithms show the loud voices, not the best-informed voices. The Digital Divide has now moved from Left-Right to Us-Them. To break through the echo chamber, we need to intentionally learn Media Lit...

 Smart phones changed regular people into media creators. Videos of protests, live streams of people's interactions with the police, and election footage, in real time, are often seen by millions before the big news outlets even start to look at them. The big news outlets were forced to cover a story that they would have otherwise ignored because of citizen journalism. The George Floyd case is an example of what I am talking about. If there hadn't been video shot by a bystander, the whole country would probably never have had a chance to see how the case developed like it did. But while creating your own news gives you more freedom, it has drawbacks too. While you are creating news, you don't have editors filtering out bad information; nor do you have people explaining context for what you just showed on TV; and finally, you don't have anyone verifying the accuracy of the information that you are showing. So, when you shoot a moment of history with your smart phone, you...