Whoever Controls the Media Controls the Mind

The greatest ethical failure of the media is how entertainment and informational content have been combined to such an extent where it is hard to differentiate the two from each other. We process, retain, and analyze information differently depending on what type of media that information comes from.

Let us establish right off the bat that “compared to news media, entertainment media [is] less effective in acquiring factual information” (Kim & Vishak 1). This may seem like an obvious point, an insignificant digit, an adjunct to a common sense argument. In Kim and Vishak’s study, they took three groups and had them watch different media content. One group watched ‘real news’ (this term is left vague in the article, but this most likely is referring to sources like traditional cable news segments), one group watched The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and the last group watched science documentaries to serve as a control group. The topic of the news segments and Jon Stewart’s show was the process behind Supreme Court Justice nominations. The study found that “both news and entertainment media promoted a great degree of political information acquisition,” however, “[o]verall, news appeared to be more effective in learning political information than entertainment media” (Kim & Vishak 14-15). As long as you consume one or the other, you’ll be more educated than if you had consumed none. But consuming news will educate you more and facilitate information acquisition more effectively than infotainment (like The Daily Show) pretty much across the board. The domination of infotainment is creating a world full of misinformed people who think that they’re the smartest people in the room.

Not only did Kim and Vishak illustrate the consequences of infotainment, but their research poses an interesting question. How does the human brain process information differently depending on the source of information? Clearly there is a difference, as the Daily Show group learned and retained less information than the ‘real news’ group.

‘Infotainment’ must be defined before going forth. The term refers to entertainment which is designed to educate and inform, usually about politics or current events. Documentary programs like Planet Earth are exempt from this umbrella term, although they fit the description for both entertainment and information. What is entertainment? Perhaps a definition might not be what we are looking for. More useful would be the motivations an individual has for seeking out entertainment.

When I watch the Philadelphia 76ers play every couple of days, I am in part motivated by a desire to escape the toils of daily life, to turn off my brain for a little while and just watch some basketball. When I read The New York Times, it is to do the opposite. It is to engross myself in current events in order to remain up-to-date on world events, to remain connected to other members of society, to educate myself. Why do people watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart? Surely, they too are looking for that social connectedness and insight into politics and world events. But to what extent is my desire to watch The Daily Show or The Colbert Report or Last Week Tonight with John Oliver escapism? I am entertained by these programs, but I certainly do not feel like I’m escaping from anything when I watch them. Both The Daily Show and the 76ers game are forms of entertainment, right? Neither of them count as ‘hard news.’

There are two distinct motivations for seeking out and consuming entertainment: hedonic and eudaimonic. Hedonic pursuits focus more on enjoyment and arousal stimulated by content which may serve as escapism. Eudaimonic motivation involves a bit more. Often do people with eudaimonic motivations for media consumption seek out experiences that “may foster a sense of insight, meaning, and social connectedness” (Bartsch & Schneider 3). You can enjoy or appreciate a piece of entertainment, in which you are motivated by hedonic or eudaimonic motives respectively. But what motivations do people have when they consume news? What about infotainment? Hedonic and eudaimonic models are all well and good for understanding why people are motivated to consume certain entertainment, but that’s not the same as understanding the results of consuming certain entertainment over educational content. I might sit down to watch some John Oliver with earnest intentions of learning something, of becoming better informed about what’s going on in the world around me, but that isn’t always what happens. I acquire and retain less information than if I would have watched hard news instead. But news anchors are not nearly as entertaining as Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert or John Oliver. It makes sense as to why they have such large followings.

Who is responsible for this fusion of informational content and entertainment? Surprisingly, this is not a hard question to answer. As of September 2020, 90% of all media is owned by six companies: ATT, CBS, Comcast, Disney, News Corp, and Viacom (Louise). These six megacorporations are responsible for nearly all media consumed in the United States. Usually big sweeping generalizations like this are not helpful, but who else is responsible for the media people are exposed to besides the people who put that media out there? While it may seem near-sighted to claim that there’s only a select few responsible for such a widespread issue, it is clear that corporate media is based on owners and CEOs and managers and editors who decide what stories get told, what stories do not get told, what stories are allowed to be told, and what stories are not allowed to be told (Miller 2). The few individuals who are in charge of such decisions are some of the most powerful people in the world. To know that there are a handful of people at any given media company who are able to determine these drastically important things is kind of scary. A select group of old conservative white men are the arbiters of what the entire country (or world in some cases) are given to consume. These people are the ones who limit the scope of what is knowable. It’s not that they just dictate what is or is not published, but what they don’t publish is more important. The total NET content of what is published by the news media creates the fenceline for what the public is even able to imagine.

The other party responsible for this issue is, well, us. Call it victim-blaming, but supply only exists when there is a demand. Jon Stewart wouldn’t have been given a show if no one was going to watch it, and you can’t really be surprised if people tune in to watch something that is generally regarded as entertaining.

The rise of infotainment is such an ethical failure because it is clear that things are going as planned by the powers that control the media. While concentration of power in some industries can lead to “market power, oligopolistic pricing and restrictive trade practices,” when it comes to the media industry, “it can change the country’s values, ideas, and politics, perhaps even the national character” (Miller 1-2). That’s a lot of power. And it is being wielded to create a less-informed populace that is not used to asking big questions about who is driving the boat.

This infotainment problem will take a herculean effort to fix. It is the Augean stable of the media industry. As evidenced by Kim and Vishak’s study, there is a growing body of research being done into the relationships people have with the media they consume. This is a step in the right direction. To swing broadly and say that all infotainment should be done away with is a swing and a miss. If something is entertaining (if there is a demand), there will always be an audience (supply) for it. We need to come together and figure out how to find a happy medium between something entertaining and something that will educate its audience. They did it with Sesame Street, why can’t they do it with Jon Stewart?

Admittedly, I am oversimplifying. But the big picture here is clear: more research needs to be done into the ways that humans process information so that the infotainment which gets made is crafted in such a way that the info outweighs the -tainment. There are certainly methods of media creation and writing and directing and etc. that accomplish this, but they must be properly researched first. “...television should be studied as a multi-dimensional phenomenon. Not only the time spent watching television but also the kinds of programs being watched and even the preference for particular stations” (Quintelier & Hooghe 1). This research is budding, but it has yet to flower.

I can’t imagine there are many people out there who would try to convince you that the media industry produces content without certain goals in mind. What are those goals? Whatever goals there may be, they can be boiled down to a simple set of priorities: produce content which is advertiser friendly and produce content that will inspire viewers to watch more of that content. Boiled down even further: produce content that is profitable.

Although a cynical view, it is one that must be kept in mind if one is to consume media responsibly. What does the creator/advertiser/publisher of this content want me to think? What product is being sold? What is the product? The rise of infotainment has obfuscated the answers to these questions, and that’s a problem. The harder it is to answer such questions, the harder it is to be a responsible consumer of any product. When the product is mass media, however, the stakes are raised. As the wise poet Jim Morrison once said, “whoever controls the media controls the mind.”

---

Works Cited

Bartsch, Anne, and Frank M. Schneider. “Entertainment and Politics Revisited: How Non‐Escapist Forms of Entertainment Can Stimulate Political Interest and Information Seeking.” Journal of Communication, vol. 64, no. 3, Wiley Subscription Services, Inc, 2014, pp. 369–96, doi:10.1111/jcom.12095

Kim, Young Mie, and John Vishak. “Just Laugh! You Don’t Need to Remember: The Effects of Entertainment Media on Political Information Acquisition and Information Processing in Political Judgment.” Journal of Communication, vol. 58, no. 2, Blackwell Publishing Inc, 2008, pp. 338–60, doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2008.00388.x

Louise, Nickie. “These 6 Corporations Control 90% of the Media Outlets in America. The Illusion of Choice and Objectivity.” Tech Startups, 18 Sept. 2020, techstartups.com/2020/09/18/6-corporations-control-90-media-america-illusion-choice-objectivity-2020/#:~:text=As of September 2020, the,Fox News), and Viacom.

Miller, Robert A. "The Frankenstein Syndrome: The Creation of Mega-Media Conglomerates and Ethical Modeling in Journalism: JBE." Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 36, no. 1, 2002, pp. 105-110. ProQuest, http://ezproxy2.library.drexel.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy2.library.drexel.edu/scholarly-journals/frankenstein-syndrome-creation-mega-media/docview/198026464/se-2?accountid=10559, doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy2.library.drexel.edu/10.1023/A:1014248014732.

Stoll, Mary Lyn. “Infotainment and the Moral Obligations of the Multimedia Conglomerate.” Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 66, no. 2/3, 2006, pp. 253–260. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25123830. Accessed 16 Mar. 2021.

Quintelier, Ellen, and Marc Hooghe. “Television and Political Participation Among Adolescents: The Impact of Television Viewing, Entertainment and Information Preferences.” Mass Communication & Society, vol. 14, no. 5, Sept. 2011, pp. 620–642. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/15205436.2010.530383.