"History is a wonderful thing, if only it was true"
-Tolstoy

Monday, September 18, 2006

The Economics of Bad News

Jim Dunnigan lays it out pretty well:

If it bleeds it leads:

"When mass media was first invented (with the development of the steam press, which made cheap-enough-to-reach-a-mass-audience newspapers possible) in the mid 19th century, editors quickly learned that terrorism sells. Put another way, excitement sells, and the best way to excite readers is to scare them. Modern terrorism, based on using murderous mass attacks on the public to trigger a flurry of media coverage, came out of this. The 19th century anarchists, followed by the Bolsheviks (communists), several fascist movements (like the Nazis) and many others, all used this media proclivity to jump on terrorist acts in order to scare readers into buying more newspapers. The terrorists got the publicity and attention they wanted, which sometimes led to acquiring political power as well. It wasn't until television news became big that most newspapers stopped printing multiple editions each day. You could sell individuals several editions a day if you had a really hot story. Scary stories were, and remain, the best kind of stories."

Rest of the piece here:
Winning The Real Winner in the War on Terror

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