Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

by Matt Taibbi

In 2016 especially, news reporters began to consciously divide and radicalize audiences. The cover was that we were merely “calling out” our divisive new president, Donald Trump. But from where I sat, the press was now working in collaboration with Trump, acting in his simplistic mirror image, creating a caricatured oppositional demographic and feeding it content. As Trump rode to the White House, we rode to massive profits. The only losers were the American people, who were now more steeped in hate than ever.

Instead, in a process that is almost 100 percent unconscious, news companies simply avoid promoting dissenting voices. People who are questioners by nature, prodders, pains in the ass—all good qualities in reporting, incidentally—get weeded out by bosses, especially in the bigger companies. Advancement is meanwhile strongly encouraged among the credulous, the intellectually unadventurous, and the obedient.

People need to start understanding the news not as “the news,” but as just such an individualized consumer experience—anger just for you.

As it turns out, there is a utility in keeping us divided. As people, the more separate we are, the more politically impotent we become. This is the second stage of the mass media deception originally described in Manufacturing Consent.

Once safely captured, we’re trained to consume the news the way sports fans do. We root for our team, and hate all the rest. Hatred is the partner of ignorance, and we in the media have become experts in selling both.

We manufactured fake dissent, to prevent real dissent.

So long as the public is busy hating each other and not aiming its ire at the more complex financial and political processes going on off-camera, there’s very little danger of anything like a popular uprising. That’s not why we do what we do. But it is why we’re allowed to operate this way. It boggles my mind that people think they’re practicing real political advocacy by watching major corporate TV, be it Fox or MSNBC or CNN. Does anyone seriously believe that powerful people would allow truly dangerous ideas to be broadcast on TV? The news today is a reality show where you’re part of the cast: America vs. America, on every channel.

The trick here is getting audiences to think they’re punching up, when they’re actually punching sideways, at other media consumers just like themselves, who just happen to be in a different silo. Hate is a great blinding mechanism. Once you’ve been in the business long enough, you become immersed in its nuances. If you can get people to accept a sequence of simple, powerful ideas, they’re yours forever.

Showing genuinely heroic or selfless people on TV would make most audiences feel inferior. Therefore, we don’t.

The notion that you are reading the truth, and not consuming a product, is the first deception of commercial media. It’s the same with conservative or liberal brands. In both cases, the product is an attention-grabber, a mental stimulant.

YOU DON’T NEED TO WATCH THAT MUCH NEWS You will never have the political power to do something about all the terrifying problems we wave at you. The human brain just isn’t designed to take in a whole world’s worth of disturbing news. Most of us have enough trouble with the more mundane problems of finding inner peace and securing happiness for our loved ones.

We create the illusion that being informed is a kind of action in itself. So to wash that guilt out—to eliminate the shame and discomfort you feel over doing nothing as the world goes mad—you’ll keep tuning in.