Hate Inc. Quotes

“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.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“Accelerated by social media, moral panic has become the last dependably profitable format of modern news reporting.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“Why use the most advanced communications technology in history to teach people basic geography, or how World Bank structural adjustment lending works, when we can instead show people idiots drinking donkey semen for money?”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“We manufactured fake dissent, to prevent real dissent.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“In my experience conservatives hate reporters mainly because they see us as phonies. We reject the idea that we belong to a class, or that we have our own tribal beliefs. Sometimes the hypocrisy is something they’ve seen—upper-class liberals, railing about racism in the heartland from the comfort of an all-white suburban town, where they occasionally tip a Puerto Rican gardener or hire a Republican plumber. But a lot of it has to do with approach and tone, the way we openly write for and celebrate professional-sect audiences, unlike the columnists of the past, the Mike Roykos or Jack Newfields, who were unembarrassed to write in the language of the working person.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“Trump doesn’t happen in a country where things are going well. People give in to their baser instincts when they lose faith in the future. The pessimism and anger necessary for this situation has been building for a generation, and not all on one side. A significant number of Trump voters voted for Obama eight years ago. A lot of those were in rust-belt states that proved critical to his election. What happened there? Trump also polled 2–1 among veterans, despite his own horrific record of deferments and his insulting of every vet from John McCain to Humayun Khan. Was it possible that his rhetoric about ending “our current policy of regime change” resonated with recently returned vets? The data said yes. It may not have been decisive, but it likely was one of many factors. It was also common sense, because this was one of his main themes on the campaign trail—Trump clearly smelled those veteran votes. The Trump phenomenon was also about a political and media taboo: class. When the liberal arts grads who mostly populate the media think about class, we tend to think in terms of the heroic worker, or whatever Marx-inspired cliché they taught us in college. Because of this, most pundits scoff at class, because when they look at Trump crowds, they don’t see Norma Rae or Matewan. Instead, they see Married with Children, a bunch of tacky mall-goers who gobble up crap movies and, incidentally, hate the noble political press. Our take on Trump voters was closer to Orwell than Marx: “In reality very little was known about the proles. It was not necessary to know much.” Beyond the utility that calling everything racism had for both party establishments, it was good for that other sector, the news media.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“Irony alert: the most important news story in the world is the inability of the ordinary news consumer to understand the news. This is no dig against readers. The world has just grown so complex that the majority of serious issues are beyond the understanding of non-specialists.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“In fact, the tension between the sheer quantity of horrifying news and your real-world impotence to do much about it is part of our consumer strategy.

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.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“You can tell a lot about a country by how boring its media is. If you turn on the TV and immediately feel like going to sleep, it generally means the political class feels secure.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“One political party may be preferable to another. A news channel, though, can’t be a vehicle for a political party and be anything but a bad thing.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“In the “Democracy Dies in Darkness” era, many in the press wear their public repudiation like badges of honor, evidence that they’re on the right journalistic track. Few seem troubled by the obvious symbiosis between Trump’s bottom-feeding, scandal-a-minute act and the massive boom in profits suddenly animating our once-dying industry (even print journalism, a business that pre-Trump seemed destined to go the way of 8-track tapes, has seen a bump in the Trump years).”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“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.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“More often, when explosive #Russiagate headlines go sideways, the original outlets simply ignore the new development, leaving the “retraction” process to conservative outlets that don’t reach the original audiences.
This is a major structural flaw of the new fully divided media landscape in which Republican media covers Democratic corruption and Democratic media covers Republican corruption. If neither “side” feels the need to disclose its own errors and inconsistencies, mistakes accumulate quickly.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“It’s the same premise as reality shows. The most popular programs aren’t about geniuses and paragons of virtue, but instead about terrible parents, morons, people too fat to notice they’re pregnant, people willing to be filmed getting ass tucks, spoiled rich people, and other folks we can deem freaks. Why use the most advanced communications technology in history to teach people basic geography, or how World Bank structural adjustment lending works, when we can instead show people idiots drinking donkey semen for money? Your media experience is designed to nurture and protect your ego. So we show you the biggest losers we can find. It’s the underlying principle of almost every successful entertainment product we’ve had, from COPS to Freakshow to, literally, The Biggest Loser. We’re probably just a few years way from a show called What Would You Suck For a Dollar?”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“Who we hate just depends on what channel we watch.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“This is a major structural flaw of the new fully divided media landscape in which Republican media covers Democratic corruption and Democratic media covers Republican corruption. If neither “side” feels the need to disclose its own errors and inconsistencies, mistakes accumulate quickly. This has been the main reportorial difference between Russiagate and the WMD affair. Despite David Remnick’s post-invasion protestations that “nobody got [WMD] completely right,” the Iraq War was launched against the objections of the 6 million or more people who did get it right, and protested on the streets. There was open skepticism of Bush claims dotting the press landscape from the start, with people like Jack Shafer tearing apart every Judith Miller story in print. Most reporters are Democrats and the people hawking the WMD story were mostly Republicans, so there”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“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,”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“As one of the British officials involved in planning this war noted (in a memo that came out years later), some of the details dumped on the public wouldn’t “hoodwink a real expert.” But that wasn’t the person they needed to fool. They needed to get exhausted, confused, frustrated audiences, heads all mixed up with fear and anger and a determination to act after 9/11, to buy a case for war that at best was designed to hold up to only temporary scrutiny. This technique of wearing out viewers with details had come into play somewhat before, with stories like Whitewater and Monicagate, but Iraq was a real milestone. It set the stage for future stories that urged audiences to accept complex sets of plots and subplots on faith. Another main lesson of Iraq was that media figures who get things wrong do not experience professional consequences. Instead, they remain in place or are promoted, in”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“If we once manufactured the consent of the population for everything from the Vietnam War to the bombing of Kosovo to the occupation of Iraq, we’re now manufacturing discontent. It’s the only way to prevent a popular uprising. It can’t hold. As we saw with the election of Trump and with the Bernie Sanders campaign (and with countless protest movements around the world, from Catalonia to the Gilets Jaunes), voters are not completely stupid. They know enough to be angry. Commercial news media has tried frantically to come up with enough red capes to keep us charging forward, but they’re running out of gimmicks.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“It’s not easy for any security official to find a journalist with the intelligence, integrity, and wherewithal to successfully protect their identities. When an official finds a reporter who’s proved he or she will not burn them by running off-the-record disclosures, the official will tend to want to protect that relationship. The official therefore will not knowingly dump a big steaming pile on that reporter’s lap.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“The public largely misunderstands the “fake news” issue. Newspapers rarely fib outright. Most “lies” are errors of omission or emphasis. There are no Fox stories saying blue states have lower divorce rates, nor are there MSNBC stories exploring the fact that many pro-choice Democrats, particularly religious ones, struggle with a schism between their moral and political beliefs on abortion.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“Rutenberg said we had to grit our teeth and give up “balance, that idealistic form of journalism with a capital ‘J’ we’ve been trained to always strive for.” Why? Because “now that he is the Republican nominee for president, the imbalance is cutting against [Trump].” An increased effort to scrutinize this candidate, call out his shit, etc., would hurt him at the polls, the theory went. In reality, this column helped plant the seeds of the infamous symbiosis of today. What Rutenberg really meant by giving up “balance” wasn’t going after Trump more—we were already calling him every name in the book—but de-emphasizing scrutiny of the other side.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“So long as we remain a bitterly divided two-party state, we’ll never want for TV villains.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“The London-based Reprieve organization found that 1,147 people were killed by drones in efforts to kill just forty-one men.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“As in politics, there are huge areas of overlap in “left” and “right” media, between MSNBC and Fox. Both channels, despite seemingly opposite politics, need you to be identically receptive to advertising. So neither channel will gross you out with stories about the maquiladora where Mexican workers are earning 70 pesos a day making your kids’ toys. They won’t scare you about the forests we’re clearing around the globe to feed the cattle we turn into cheap hamburgers advertised in between segments.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“Democrats and Republicans spent a year writing themselves a pork-packed Christmas list on the scale of the Iraq invasion, full of monster expenditures, including money for dangerous new forms of nukes. Yet the headline when Trump signed the freaking thing was that he forgot to mention the senator whose name was attached to the legislation.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“as is curiously also the case with high-level politicians, top on-air personalities and print editorialists are never geniuses. They almost never say or write surprising things. They don’t dazzle or amaze.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“When you go looking for something specific, your chances of finding it are very bad. Because of all the things in the world, you’re only looking for one of them. When you go looking for anything at all, your chances of finding it are very good.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“Most people are terrified of throwing their vote away, so they'll steer clear of any candidate the press tells them has no chance. Particularly when the incumbent is odious, voters won't vote their own interest and conscience. They actually think it's their civic duty not to.

The trick works best with political minority groups, who've been trained to vote according to how they're told a larger plurality thinks. Until pretty recently, if you were nonwhite, female, single, childless, or gay, you were typically told you had to choose between a slew of straight white candidates who "polls said" had an actual chance.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“In his book, Cohen referenced an old joke: What do pro wrestling and the U.S. Senate have in common? Both are dominated by overweight white guys pretending to hurt each other. He said, “The intellectual level of cable news is one step above pro wrestling.” Cohen wrote that over a decade ago. Today the news is at the level of pro wrestling. This is one reason we have a WWE performer in the White House.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another