Ask Lemmy

For the entire time I've been alive, we have been a supply-side economics country. Which means that rather than companies creating products based upon the needs of the people and selling them, much or perhaps most of the economy is oriented toward making you want (largely) unnecessary things that companies have created.

The news media serves this economic structure in a few different ways:

• It notifies you of new products -- essentially acting as the marketing arm of the companies -- to keep the economy humming along and people consuming things.
• It wants you to consume its main, likely unnecessary product (i.e. 24/7, up-to-the-second news) in order to both assist the above goal of having you consume that marketing, and because it itself is a supply-side economic product.
• It relays at every possible opportunity the message that not keeping up with the news will result in you missing out on important things, or might result in potential disaster.

It is often the news organizations themselves -- and the people who act as boosters for them either unintentionally or intentionally -- that pretend that you have some personal responsibility to consume every bit of news about every flatulent (be it government, celebrity, or corporate) that opened their mouth today.