Fox News and The New York Times have a great deal in common.
Both create excitement to attract viewers, readers, a loyal following and advertisers. The media requires advertisers to exist.
No Excitement, No Audience
No Advertisers, No Media
Different media outlets obviously create excitement in very different ways for different audiences. They have the power to create certain cravings and fulfill them.
That's the nature of advertising: Excite and then Incite buying behavior.
Problems arise when these same principles are applied to politically prurient materials. Exciting and then Inciting specific predefined political responses and behavior is propaganda.
Reputable news organizations creatively challenge people to think, analyze information and then draw their own conclusions. They do not try to Incite specific responses or behaviors except when they clearly label the information flow as Opinion.
Great dangers lie in allowing political propaganda to be falsely portrayed as news. They did that in Nazi Germany.
It purveys untruths and incites predefined political behaviors behind a shield of mislabeling. In America that's false advertising, which is not protected under the First Amendment. False advertising is against the law.
It's Propaganda, not Opinion. Let's call it by its real name.
Copyright 1999- , Michele Moore. Free Use Granted when source is cited. Explore HappinessHabit.com and HappinessBlog.com.
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