[nullc]

I don't know why you think "media companies" hate anything.

I think that they're just doing whatever makes the most money.

Printing hardly researched often untrue shock-garabage makes a lot of money. It gets traffic from people who agree with it and traffic from people who think it's awful. Even lying outright-- there are no consequences and it's cheap to produce. If anyone cares the controversy just means even more traffic.

No great conspiracy is required. Modern consumption patterns have made essentially tabloid grade 'journalism' more profitable than it was while making traditional modes of journalism less profitable. If the commercial operations weren't producing junk at scale they'd probably be put out of business by grass roots tabloid-content production.

I'm sure there are plenty of journalists who would like to do better, but wishes doesn't put food on the table. They produce what earns money or they find another line of work.

We get what we incentivize.

[JackFr]

I agree that we get what we incentivize. But there is really nothing new about this at all.

The idea of news outlets presenting unvarnished truth without slant or bias is a fantasy world that never existed. In fact, while the technology has changed, the journalism of today is much more reliable and objective than that of one and two hundred years ago.

[SpicyLemonZest]

I think media companies hate it because media companies regularly argue that it's bad. For example, there was a major scandal in late 2016 and early 2017 about the fact that nontraditional news sources sometimes publish lies; every mainstream news outlet I saw at the time argued that this is a new, bad trend, and that we should react by refocusing our trust on mainstream news outlets since they don't publish lies.

There are plenty of publishers like the National Enquirer, which make no pretense to be anything other than shock-garbage. The Wall Street Journal has a different stance.

[rumanator]

> I think that they're just doing whatever makes the most money.

You're assuming that the end goal is profits, although it is not. Profits are what keeps media companies running, but their main goal is power and influence over public opinion.