Partisan cable news abandoned objectivity to confirm viewer biases at the public’s expense

Evidence

The commercial success of both Fox News and MSNBC is a source of nonpartisan sadness for me. While I can appreciate the financial logic of drowning television viewers in a flood of opinions designed to confirm their own biases, the trend is not good for the republic. … Beginning, perhaps, from the reasonable perspective that absolute objectivity is unattainable, Fox News and MSNBC no longer even attempt it. They show us the world not as it is, but as partisans (and loyal viewers) at either end of the political spectrum would like it to be. This is to journalism what Bernie Madoff was to investment: He told his customers what they wanted to hear, and by the time they learned the truth, their money was gone. — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 142

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to deliberation-mass polarization claims in Annihilation of Caste and to the complacency/mainstreaming arguments from the New Crusades works on Islamophobic media. — connects to: Cable news networks profited enormously by giving Trump free media coverage — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 188; Television bias comes from structural constraints, not practitioners’ politics or censorship — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 859; Journalistic objectivity grants a false outsider status to reports created from inside conflicts — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 869 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Journalistic objectivity grants a false outsider status to reports created from inside conflicts #corroborates (0.78) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 869
• Television bias comes from structural constraints, not practitioners’ politics or censorship #contradicts (0.75) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 859
• Media bias cannot be explained by broadcasters’ personal politics. #contradicts (0.75)
• Media bias is neither conspiracy nor freedom but overdetermined institutional convergence #qualifies (0.72)