So what you're saying is local news are just puppets and mouth pieces for bodies like Rueters and AP? They just repeat what national news says. I feel so much better now.
A comment as thick-skulled as always.
No, they're not "puppets". A puppet is controlled without choice. They
choose which headlines come off the international and national wires they choose to rebroadcast. The don't have the resources to send out reporters across the world. Most can barely cover their local beats adequately.
If they were puppets, they would not enjoy this freedom. Furthermore, the services like the one I shared scrape from dozens (or even hundreds) of different news organizations across the world. There is no echo chamber. Reuters and the AP are two of the largest ones. This has been standard practice for decades. The difference is the technology has matured, so more news generators are aggregated, but today, they'll also track the trending counts. The potential downside to this is that the stories that are trending will be more likely to be shared, and it becomes a feast or famine system of rebroadcasting; the stories that are tracking well becomes even more likely to get picked up, and their inertia builds like a snowball. The result is the stories that are covered narrows like wealth accumulating at the top. Major wire contributors tend to dominate.
A better analogy are the supermarkets. There is an illusion of choice. You think all these different news stations, like all the different food choices, represent a deeply diverse landscape. It is not so. Virtually every frozen pizza or snack you see is owned and sold by one of a half dozen companies. Nearly every carton of milk or cut of meat across the country comes from one of six different dairy plants or butchering slaughterhouses. This is the reality of our national news.
Nevertheless, it's not the most alarming reality. After all, some stories are more important than others. Everyone
should be reporting the most important news. No, the
real problem is that the stories that are tracking lately are the clickbait headlines; the ones that divide us, or sensationalize some trivial nonsense. Sex sells. Scandal sells. Hyperbole sells.
Outrage sells.
Hard news doesn't sell.
