My views on the media litter Hubski. I've been on a few rants full of links, and this will add to that list. Basically, the media sucks. My angle of attack is from my upbringing as a guy who likes metal music, D&D and Video games. To pick one example to expand on, video games are to blame for all the ills in society. They are why the churches are empty, why there are so many broken families, the source of all violence and mass shootings, they are why the obesity epidemic took off, they are why global warming is accelerating, they are why Trump got elected, they are why Los Angeles has smog, they are why dogs and cats live together causing mass hysteria.

Sorry for the hyperbole. I've been playing video games since the 1970's. I got wrapped up in the D&D moral panic in the 1980's when the media went off on a bit of a bender targeting the new media for all the problems in the world. The Satanic Panic is a fascinating study of how the media in general works. That podcast is highly recommended. This media storm culminated in the McMartin Preschool events where the prosecutors and the media whipped up a moral panic over satanic rituals being conducted in a preschool in California. NONE of the reported events were true, all of them were made up, and a family was ruined for sensationalism and ratings. Oh, and the therapist who pulled out the 'repressed memories' of the children? She was having an affair with the lead reporter and feeding him info to help her case in the court of public opinion

Then in the middle of the 1990's as the crime rates were plunging, you had idiots like Jack Thompson call Doom a "murder simulator." Multiple people in government jumped on the train to blame movies and video games for everything bad in society. Meanwhile...

From 2008, for example There have also been studies saying that video games increase "aggression" but don't explain what that means and if that "aggression" leads to physical violence. link to summary that has links to the study from 2015 And there is a lot of weasel words when talking about these topics. For example Video games may cause violence. But the thing is? News reporting violent crime and making heroes out of mass killers is adding to the problems. This is called copycat theory The FBI tells the news media how to handle mass shootings but since those suggestions do not bring in ratings, these suggestions are laughed at and ignored.

“Scientists have investigated the use of violent video games for more than two decades but to date, there is very limited research addressing whether violent video games cause people to commit acts of criminal violence,” said Mark Appelbaum, PhD, task force chair. “However, the link between violence in video games and increased aggression in players is one of the most studied and best established in the field.”

But the thing is? News reporting violent crime and making heroes out of mass killers is adding to the problems. This is called copycat theory The FBI tells the news media how to handle mass shootings but since those suggestions do not bring in ratings, these suggestions are laughed at and ignored.

So how does this relate to people who play video games? There are about 200 million of us in North America. Media has demonized us for so long that they completely blew a potential audience and now they are competing for eyeballs... and losing, badly. It has hit the point where men and boys no longer watch television; imagine that! demonize half your audience and they stop watching your garbage. There are a few people starting to see the writing on the wall and telling people to stop blaming gamers for everything. This is not new, but with the massive decline in ad revenue and viewership, the panic is starting to creep in around the edges. From 2003, this article talks about the decline in men watching TV Every time a new media comes into play, the old media attacks it. It happened to books, radio, TV, Movies, Comic books etc. The last thing that regularly brings in male eyeballs was sports. Then sport went from talking about the game to becoming TMZ and E Entertainment Television and men bailed on sports. ESPN is losing viewers by the 100,000's a quarter NFL ratings are plunging for the same reasons

The news media hates you. The news media exists to stir chaos to gain eyeballs and sell advertising. They also do everything they can to grab you by ideological capture to keep you hooked on their programming. (Fox viewers don't watch MSNBC and vis-versa for example.) The things out there that impact the ability to collect eyeballs are the enemy, like every industry they want the monopoly and fight like hell to keep it. Comic Books were evil because they threatened newspaper readership. Radio was evil for the same reason. TV was evil in the early days because it threatened theater and movies. Video games and interactive media are now cannibalizing television and movie viewership. Netflix is also a giant nail in the coffin; want to know why news owned by cable companies hate Netflix? Netflix viewers are cutting Cable TV subscriptions by the thousands. Hell, there were serious moral panics over books breaking up the family and causing suicides in the 1700's.

Malcolm X was talking about his to people in the 1960's.

The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make the criminal look like he's a the victim and make the victim look like he's the criminal. This is the press, an irresponsible press. It will make the criminal look like he's the victim and make the victim look like he's the criminal. If you aren't careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing. If you aren't careful, because I've seen some of you caught in that bag, you run away hating yourself and loving the man — while you're catching hell from the man. You let the man maneuver you into thinking that it's wrong to fight him when he's fighting you. He's fighting you in the morning, fighting you in the noon, fighting you at night and fighting you all in between, and you still think it's wrong to fight him back. Why? The press. The newspapers make you look wrong.

So this was a rant to get to a point: The media went all in on Clinton. We now know from the Wikileaks documents that the press and the Clinton campaign were connected at the hip. Those same people now have a hate-boner for Trump (and as someone who does not like Trump as a person, this can be good for those of us working to oppose him). Ideally, in my mind, Trump is not going to be able to do anything IMO because the press will whip up opposition to his policies. Unfortunately, the 'media' is now know as a Russian nesting doll of hacks and shills and the people we need to show the terrible side effects of what Trump wants to do will tune out. The 2016 election was a massive blow to the facade of the power of traditional media, and that walking corpse is going to do everything it can over the next four years to remain relevant. I've been there since the late 1980's. Now a whole new generation has found out that the media sucks. And I'm looking forward to watching that collision.