Broken News Why the Media Rage Machine Divides America and How to Fight Back

Former Fox News political editor Chris Stirewalt takes readers inside the media industry to reveal how news organizations have succumbed to the temptation of “rage revenue” with slanted coverage that drives political division and rewards outrageous conduct.

In a media world as fragmented and competitive as ours, mass-market news is a thing of the past. Fifty years ago, when one in five American adults were watching Walter Cronkite every weeknight, news outlets were broadcasting in every sense. The goal was to attract the broadest audience possible. Now, top-rated cable news shows attract about one in 100 American adults. But attraction isn’t really the goal. Instead, news outlets want addiction. You can pile a tall stack of cash on top of a narrow base – if it’s sturdy enough.

Today’s news business relies on emotion-driven blabber to entrance conflict-addled super users. To cultivate these intense readers, viewers, or listeners, media companies need consumers to have strong feelings. Fear, resentment and anger work wonders. But in such a competitive marketplace, riling up the users isn’t enough. You’ve also got to create a safe space. “Bad news” that is sad or frustrating can click like gangbusters. But news that is bad for your readers’ ideological in-groups is clickbait kryptonite. Outlets therefore are under great pressure to stop doing the one thing that truly separates news from entertainment: sometimes telling people what they don’t want to hear.
 
So many outlets big and small, left, right and center have moved away from even aspirational fairness and balance and towards shared anger and brain-dead partisan tribalism. Reporters increasingly disdain the old virtues of fairness and balance as “bothsidesism,” reimagining the ancient vice of bias as something crucial. Opinion pages become more homogeneous. Story selections become more predictable. Most ominously, post-journalism produces stifling groupthink inside news organizations and serious consequences for journalists who dissent.
 
But Stirewalt writes in Broken News that consumers have a say in this. These companies don’t reward bad journalism because they like it, but because it is easy and profitable. This book serves as a reminder that we have the power to be better news consumers not just for the sake of the republic, but so that we can ultimately become better, happier, more optimistic, more interesting people.

Chris Stirewalt is a political columnist and author who served as political editor of the Fox News Channel, where he served on its election night decision desk, helped coordinate political coverage across the network, and frequently provided on-air analysis. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he focuses on American politics, public opinion, and the media. He is a contributing editor and weekly columnist for The Dispatch and co-hosts a media criticism podcast, Ink Stained Wretches. He is the author of Every Man a King: A Short, Colorful History of American Populists (Twelve Books, 2018), in which he looks at American populism through the lives of seven famous populists.