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

“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

“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

“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

“Who we hate just depends on what channel we watch.”
― 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

“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

“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 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

“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

“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

“A media that currently applauds itself for calling out the lies of Donald Trump (and they are lies) still uses shameful government-concocted euphemisms like “collateral damage.” Our new “Democracy Dies in Darkness” churlishness has yet to reach the Pentagon, and probably never will.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“Most sports media trains audiences to see the world as a weird dualistic theology. The home city is a safe space where the righteous team is cheered and irrational worship is encouraged. Everywhere else is darkness. Opposing fans are deluded haters. Increasingly most local fan bases are encouraged to see the national sports media as arrayed against them, too. Long before Donald Trump trained followers to see CNN as fake news, countless local fan bases learned to despise ESPN as a corporate villain out to undermine their team.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“carried audiences along safely down the middle of a surprisingly narrow political and intellectual canal.”
― 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

“If you want to be happier, if you want to live in a world that may be thick with problems but is at least a sunnier place where people are more decent to one another and more willing to cooperate and show kindness, just turn off the tube.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“The news is an addictive product. Like cigarettes, this product can have a profound negative impact on your health. Almost without exception it will make you lonelier, more anxious, more distrustful of others, and more depressed.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“As I would later discover in my own career, there are a lot of C-minus brains in the journalism business. A kind of groupthink is developed that permeates the upper levels of media organizations, and they send unconscious signals down the ranks.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“In the social media age, we can scare you as never before. Which means politicians will have an easier time obtaining permission for censorship, surveillance, immigration bans, and other expanded powers.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“This is the hallmark of the moral panic scenario. It’s a real story, but it’s exaggerated, often wildly, and comes wrapped in proposals for authoritarian solutions.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

“Scare the crap out of people, and media companies get richer, while state agencies get more and more license for authoritarian crackdowns on the “folk devil” of the moment. A perfect partnership.”
― Matt Taibbi, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another