_Bon_Vivant_

_Bon_Vivant_ t1_iu9spt9 wrote

Nightline was the the catalyst that spawned the News for Profit, and thereby the Sensationalist fear mongering that we have in the news today. Nightline birthed Fox News and CNN.

Before Nightline, news was a loss leader in TV broadcasting. Networks lost money broadcasting news. Networks only ran news because the FCC required it in order to obtain and maintain a broadcast license. But the benefit for society was, since they weren't trying to attract eyeballs to the screen for ad revenue, they could keep the news to honest, boring news. They didn't need to sensationalize stories by appealing to viewers primal instincts of fear, sex and gossip.

Now, fear is the main driver of society, and bad actor adversarial governments have leveraged that fact to topple their adversaries from the inside, and social media has only amplified their ability to do that exponentially.

Democracy itself is threatened by what Nightline spawned.

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