Mainstream Media Will Narrow Your Perspective

Mainstream media is motivated by ratings and viewership.  News websites are driven by likes and shares.  And in an era where information is plentiful and truth is relative, factual journalism has been replaced by articles written primarily as click-bait.  This leaves the reader with half-truths and lies that which only confirm his or her existing biases.  

It doesn't challenge the reader.  It doesn't expand on the their world view.  In fact, it narrows it down, which makes it easier for advertisers to target specific consumers.  So basically mainstream media and these news sites are doing advertisers a favor by collecting and consolidating users with similar preferences.  Technically, this is a conflict of interest, in which, the interest is that people wish to be informed while the conflict is that the news source will put more effort into the attention-getting headline rather than the accuracy of the information.  

Of course, ad revenue is what pays the bills.  So maybe the only way for a news source to be able to truly prioritize its readers is to rely on subscriptions for revenue.  Either way, this is the state of journalism in this "post-truth" era, in which our news sources will filter what we see and continue to narrow our perspective.