A Citizen's Guide to Cable News

And mainstream media too.

"To be sure, in every town the lot was crawling with marks-but she had acquired the carney viewpoint; marks did not count -- they might as well have been behind glass. Jill quite understood why the girls in the posing show could and did exhibit themselves in very little (and, in some towns, nothing, if the fix was solid) without feeling immodest...and without being immodest in their conduct outside the posing show. 

Marks weren't people to them; they were blobs of nothing, hardly seen, whose sole function was to cough up half dollars for the take." -- “Stranger In A Strange Land” by Robert Heinlein

This is precisely how the mainstream media views the public.  As blobs of nothing, whose sole function is to cough up eyeballs and ratings and, in the case of Conservative media, votes.  

Any interest in the state of the democracy which makes their industry possible never makes it to the executive suites, nor does any concern about what their own actions are doing to endanger that democracy

Remember this?  From the Hollywood Reporter, February 26, 2016: 

Leslie Moonves can appreciate a Donald Trump candidacy.

Not that the [disgraced and since-fired] CBS executive chairman and CEO might vote for the Republican presidential frontrunner, but he likes the ad money Trump and his competitors are bringing to the network.

“It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” he said of the presidential race.

Moonves called the campaign for president a “circus” full of “bomb throwing,” and he hopes it continues.

“Most of the ads are not about issues. They’re sort of like the debates,” he said.

“Man, who would have expected the ride we’re all having right now? … The money’s rolling in and this is fun,” he said.

Corporate thinking like this is why it never occured to anyone at CNN that giving Trump 70 minutes of live teevee in front of a hooting, howling mob of Trump sycophants was, y'know a bad idea. Corporate thinking like this is why virtually all public-facing CNN employees and wannabe-employees were marched out to dutifully report that CNN's very public disaster was, in face, an awesome public service.   And why Anderson Cooper went on the air to scold the viewing public as silo-dwelling morons for not appreciating CNN's awesomeness...which, to be charitable, did not go as well as Cooper probably thought it was going to go.

From Forbes:

Anderson Cooper Slammed From All Sides—Trump And Media Critics Pile On Over CNN’s Town Hall

...After Cooper’s comments, others in the media criticized him for defending his network’s decision to host the town hall, with political commentator Keith Olbermann taking to Twitter to say, “Instead of Anderson Cooper bravely calling out his bosses, last night he blamed his audience,” and NPR media analyst Eric Deggans tweeting that Cooper gave viewers the false choice of ignoring Trump or giving him a platform with no pushback.

CNN alumni also weighed in, as former analyst Jeff Greenfield called Cooper’s comment “a straw man” and said “it conflates the real need to cover Trump . . . with the format CNN used, which proved disastrous,” and former CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien said it was “an attempt at damage control.”

And like every coward who has ever stood by watching a bully beat up someone smaller and weaker  and done nothing for fear of being next, all those CNN thralls stood around and said and did nothing while CNN's new fascist-friendly CEO, Chris Licht, flogged the one honest voice at CNN for being mildly critical of CNN's debacle.

From The Wrap:

CNN CEO Chris Licht Reprimanded Reporter Oliver Darcy for His ‘Emotional’ Coverage of Trump Town Hall

CNN CEO Chris Licht “summoned” network media reporter Oliver Darcy into his office after the Donald Trump Town hall and chastised him for making his coverage “too emotional” while also asserting the importance of the appearance of unbiased reporting, according to Puck’s Dylan Byers.

On Friday, Byers, who is the founding partner and senior correspondent at Puck, tweeted that Darcy and his editor had been “summoned” to a meeting with Licht and “top executives in which they told him that his coverage of Trump town hall had been too emotional and stressed the importance of remaining dispassionate.”...

Because the only thing media corporations care about is this strictly, cold-blooded profit-and-loss calculation:  how they can most efficiently hook the marks, and how they can keep 'em coming back for more.  

And if a freakshow of bomb-throwing clowns is what keeps the marks glued to the teevee, well for God's sake, send in the clowns!

I Am The Liberal Media