People want news that confirms their world view. The few people who wants news to inform their worldviews is in the minority, or if not in the minority they are the silent (read not that media consuming) majority. And as Edmund Burke has said “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”
What sells the news?
Paul Krugman gives his view of what sells the news. It is a view that fits the vision of the Gray Lady quite well: a clear distinction between news pages and editorial pages, facts supported by data etc. That is also how I want my news presented. However the evidence that that sells the news is quite thin. Whatever Rupert did to the WSJ Journal (that which Felix Salmon and Brad Delong rail against) appears to be working.
More generally opinion dressed up as news, especially when it panders to the prejudice of your readers or viewers works seems to sell really well. A while back I gave a quarterly series of operating profits (in millions) for Fox Cable Networks – a business dominated by Fox News. Here they are again: 197, 262, 211,194, 249, 275, 282, 284, 289, 337, 330, 313, 379, 428, 429, 434, 495.
There are few businesses with growth in operating profits without substantial capital expenditure that look anything like that. Well Fox News gets even better (at least from the perspective of a News Corp shareholder). The latest number is was $604 million operating profit for the quarter ended 30 December 2009.
via Bronte Capital: In which Paul Krugman proves he is an academic snob who argues from his prejudice rather than the data.