The term, “meme,” doesn’t only mean a snarky cat photo. The term was coined by Richard Dawkins in his book, The Selfish Gene, and was meant to reflect a much broader class of ideas that needn’t even be digital, that survive through time by virtue of their propensity to be catchy, for any myriad of reasons. (See this article for how the word was hijacked.)
With this broader, original definition in mind, let’s consider how the idea works with the news outlets and what weaning myself of these outlets has done.
Washington Post, Fox News, The New York Times, and CNN are a few daily news sources that have survived and continued to thrive in the information age. They compete for their audience, and their survival depends not exclusively upon their audience, but more so upon their advertising partners. It’s the advertising partners that need the audience. In this way, the news process is a bit like a food web, with people at the bottom.
And in this foodweb, the media is in a bit of a pinch. As middleman, it must accommodate both the advertisers with competitive pricing and prominent display, and an audience that meets the advertiser’s targets.
Evolution happens fastest when there are environmental pressures are the greatest. The surviving major media outlets persist not because they provide the most honest and noble journalism, but because they have managed to serve this role between advertisers and audience effectively. In order to satisfy the advertisers (the media’s need to please the audience is only indirect, as explained above), they need to supply advertisers with a large, targeted audience. There is no way to project plainly dealt observations while attracting a targeted audience. That just can’t happen. You may attract scientists and historians, but unless those are your target demographic, you’re going to lose the advertisers that you need to survive.
I believe that this is how surviving major media has become so ‘flavored.’ Further, news outlets tap into neurotically habituating human states like fear and the subsequent vigilance, which have proved more powerful in this increasingly sour news cycle than the human interest stories of old that feature the shoemaker and the bake sale.
What can this do? Look at how some of these outlets have been warping information to be more palatable to their audience. My mom was trained as a journalist, and loved the journalistic flavor of the ticker tape on CNN’s broadcasts. As she gradually declined into dementia, she clung to that red ticker tape as if it was the last miserable thread tying her to reality. And the news was miserable, but she clung- howling if the station was changed- addicted to the vigilance, fear, and anxiety until the day she died.
What I’ve done is pretty simple and the benefits happened quickly after the addiction to vigilance waned. I’ve sought out news sources that are less dependent on advertising and that are robustly edited (yes, that often means paying), or sources that are academic or peer-reviewed. Some of these paid sources are still driven to please their audience, their bias is a function of their editors, rather than their advertisers. I check out their editorial board, as well. Looking at the audience, also, is a measure of who the outlet aims to please. Is it narrow or broad, and does that suit the subject matter? The news that I get is far less addicting, and I like to think that it has less bias. It’s just one approach, but it frees me up so I can enjoy what is good in my life, and not put me at risk of suffering my mom’s demise.