Running for Your Life: 24-Hour News: A Demagogue’s Dream

Demagogue (n): a person who stirs up public feelings especially of discontent, ie that politician is just a demagogue who preys upon people’s fears and prejudices.

Question: What counts as news in America more than ratings. Anyone?

Answer: You’re right. Nothing.

Question: What would you guess is delivering on high ratings (higher profits) in the history of 24-hour cable news?

Answer: Candidate debates, 2016. In this the craziest presidential election year in every talking heads’ memory what to do but slate as many candidate debates on 24-hour news channels as you can. Oh, and don’t even think to tinker with the format, especially when ratings (profits), as we’ve found in the latest business quarter, soar when a demagogue “stirs up public feelings especially of discontent, ie that politician is just a demagogue who preys upon people’s fears and prejudices.”

As to the public right to know? A mandate to perform a public service by presenting and analyzing the news in a way that doesn’t merit comparisons to March Madness or the Super Bowl or the World Series, in which each of us gather round the set or table or neighborhoods bar (Go Donald! You tell ’em, Bern!) and cheer blindly for our favorite team (brand, politician), must be a foreign idea.

I’m thinking Canada, for one.

Which might speak to why the domicile-change requests to the Canadian consulate are spiking these days. Or am I not making the right assumptions here?

Next: Running for Your Life: If the Greats Were With Us Thursday  


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