News

Most people are aware and/or maybe even participate in the divisiveness in the world around us and often times people place the blame on the other guy or the other side. Back in the day people got their news from Walter Cronkeit or the local newspaper and most from the paper. People forget this but it wasn't until 1963 that the evening TV news expanded from 15 minutes to 30 minutes. I remember thinking what are going to have to talk about for a half hour. The news had a monopoly and didn't need exciting news to get viewers or newspaper readers. In 1980 CNN started with 24 hour news and I had the same question. What are they going to talk about. Well as it happened they still just had 15 minutes of news but they repeated it over and over. Still there was not that much competition and they could still make money. The along came the Internet which led in the late 1990's to social media. The national TV news and newspapers around the country begin to lose customers and the competition for viewers and readers became intense. It was at that point where the news changed. They discovered that the only way to get clicks was to get the viewer emotionally involved and that let to reporting a slant on the news. What used to be limited to places like The National Enquirer become mainstream. The next step was to find which audience liked which viewpoints and set up stories to satisfy that audience. These outlets are well aware that it is biased reporting that keeps their viewers and that is their strategy. So today we have news outlets that deliberately strive to divide the country into groups just to improve their bottom line and the people all fall for it.