The media makes money by exciting you, scaring you and making you put emotion ahead of reason.
Lots of money. Obscene amounts of money… and power…
Why is this important for a prepper? It is critical that preppers understand when they are being manipulated and herded like cattle.
It’s not just the mainstream media I’m talking about here, in fact some of the biggest culprits in the “Circus Of Fear” as I like to call it are different alternative websites and people who have books and products to sell you.
Without going into a ton of details about myself, let me state that I have been a member of the news media for over 35 years now, in one capacity or another, including being a reporter, photographer, editor, editor-in-chief and contributing editor of several different local newspapers. I KNOW, from the inside out, how the media works, and I’ve covered local and national events and can compare & contrast what the national media reported and what actually happened.
It’s all about the reads, the views, the clicks… it really is. The truth takes one heck of a beating at the hands of the media.
Let’s get right to the takeaway I want to give for this article: Follow the money. Every single time you read an article, or watch a report on TV, I want you to think “OK, how does this make this network/newspaper/website money?” because, frankly, there are very few places that don’t care about the money first, and the “truth” a distant second.
By and large (again this counts for national, regional and local media as well as alternative media), the media wants to do one thing… drive viewership/readership so that people watch/click on their ads so that media outlet can make money.
This leads to sensationalizing everything, and it’s a large part of what is driving the big “hate machine” we’ve got going on these days. It’s not about the truth, it’s not about what is important, it’s about what is needed to get you to tune in.
They are trying to get you to buy into their point of view because they want you to continue reading/listening to them. Why? Money & power. They want to add you to “their herd”.
This is also how we have become so divided nationally… there are “media” outlets like websites, television and radio shows that are partisan and that exist to drive their listeners into a passion about whatever point of view they are expounding. The more people get mad, the more they listen, the higher the ratings go, which raises ad revenue… which brings us back to “follow the money”.
When I hear people “aping” certain media members who use particular buzzwords, it let’s me know that the media outlet has converted a herd member. I’m not going to repeat any of the words, because this website is non-political, but you all know exactly what I am talking about…
Most preppers I know will find the idea that they are being herded offensive as heck… I know I do… but herding is EXACTLY what the media is trying to do, herd us towards the product they have to sell.
Understanding the motivations of people outside of an industry is a prime prepping tool, looking past the “what they are saying” into the idea of “what benefit does this person get by telling me this” is a great way to figure out what their agenda is.
NOTE: Beans, Bullets, Bandages & You contains no advertising, and is entirely unsponsored. We have no dog in this hunt.
You’re right. I often feel herded.
It doesn’t take too much scrutiny to see that those prophesying economic doom, are handily selling gold. The more genearalist fear mongers seem to simply want more traffic for their varied advertiser revenue. Sadly, fear sells.
Seems like ever since Y2K, there’s always been some mega-looming-disaster just a few months away. The feared date passes with nothing happening, but the fear mongers only pick a new date and beat their drums again. I’ve lost track of how many “this could be it” dates have come and gone.
As somebody who worked very long and hard hours to help fix the Y2K problem (and there was a really, really big problem… we just got it fixed in time to not be a problem by the time Y2K rolled around) it drove me nuts how the media and people treated the event, as if it were a hoax. It most definitely was not, but we got it fixed ahead of time so it turned out to be a non-event. Unfortunately, the media and the fear mongers ignored our “relax, we’ve got this taken care of” message because that doesn’t sell… and while we in the tech field made it a non-event, they hyped it as one of those “this is TEOTWAWKI” events, which it wasn’t because we fixed the issues.
I for one took my lovely wife out to dinner in a nice restaurant 60 miles from home, we wore our formal wear and danced the night away with campaign and the music of a big band playing in the background… that’s how worried I was about Y2K by that point in time.