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

by Matt Taibbi

Studies consistently show (and everyone in the business knows this) that you need to kill third-worlders in massive numbers to earn anything like the coverage we’d devote to one dead American, particularly an upper-class American. One of the ugliest stats ever recorded about the press in this country that almost, but not quite, validates Goldberg’s thesis involves CNN coverage of Congo between 2004 and 2008. At the time, about fifty thousand Congolese a month were dying from war, genocide, and associated problems like disease. It’s one of the major humanitarian disasters of the last hundred years, rivaling World War II for deaths. But of the forty-four Africa segments on Anderson Cooper 360 during that four-year period, only sixteen did not involve either Angelina Jolie or the plight of gorillas. Forget about lesbians in third-world counties—we don’t cover people in third-world countries period.