Waaaay back in the marches of time when Television was new, some folks (such as the brilliant Steve Allen, for one) were very excited by this new opportunity to bring education to all people. Through a simple device like a TV, educational and thought-provoking programs could be presented all day every day giving everyone a chance to enhance their lives and our society and our nation (and the world) by enhancing their thinking and general awareness.
Well, that got side-tracked (to say the least) by different people who saw an opportunity to make money through advertising, and then the subsequent need to keep advertisers happy, and the advertisers deciding that no one was going to watch any long-hair, high-brow mumbo-jumbo… and besides, educated consumers are harder to sell things to, and all that wonderful opportunity went away. Instead we got “dancing cigarette packages” [old reference to a Robert Heinlein novel, based on what was literally an approach to selling cigarettes on TV], and insulting or anger-provoking programming. Except just now and then.
Plus, some folks also saw TV as the Great Programmer, rather than the Great Educator (ask George Orwell and Aldous Huxley — they were trying to warn people where we were going, but ended up giving Ideas to the wrong people, unfortunately)
Today, instead of 3 “major broadcasting networks” (probably only two of which were available in your area), we have 500 channels of mostly useless stuff, with an occasional gem included, almost by accident, almost apologetically. Highly opinionated or polarized “news services” have sprung up, each calling all the others “spawn of Satan” (or equivalent terms) and pronouncing themselves to be the only source of “how it really is.”
What’s really going on is that they are giving you opinions you already agree with. They are not educating you, they are not giving you anything to mull over; they are entrenching you further and further into what ever your opinion already is, thereby helping you to close the door on further thought or insight. By giving you opinions you already agree with, they have a tested, known audience and the sponsors and advertisers know this and will pay more for the advertising air time. It’s psychology applied to business, it’s neither news nor education. It is reprehensible, though.
Similarly the Internet had the potential to bring All Knowledge to All People. The totality of everything at everyone’s finger tips. For a short while, literacy was even going up, but then video became cheap and easy to do on the internet and on most folk’s computers and that was that. Studies have shown that folks don’t search for facts, they search for corroborating opinions when looking around on the Internet. They look for what ever websites or social “chat rooms” bolster their current opinions, no interest in checking whether the opinion is valid, invalid, could be refined, etc. What are the facts? Who cares! I found some one who agrees with me!! Yuck…
So, the same thing has happened with the Internet that happened with TV, only more so. Instead of 500 channels, there are millions of them, all looking to build a market base and gather advertising dollars. The best profit on advertising comes from selling to a known audience. The more polarized your message is, the more you can guarantee who your audience is, and therefore the more you can charge for your advertising spaces. For 49 out of 50 internet websites (“channels”) that’s all that’s going on.
Note: there is no advertising on this website. Nor am I selling anything (well, maybe a viewpoint, but that’s all). So there… This is not unusual for me; some people ask “well, then, why do you do it?” I think that’s a case of “if you have to ask the question…”