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News Media, Money and Infotainment Essay

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News Media, Money and Infotainment

In the past few years the media has grown into more than just the facts. The goal of the media is not just to inform us but to entertain. This new media style is known as "Infotainment". The media's goals are ratings based. They use shows like Jerry Springer, Entertainment Tonight, and Hard Copy to bring in these ratings. The media of today has grown into a profit-based industry that tries to entertain us with the news and with tabloid television shows.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s the three big television stations, of ABC, CBS, and NBC, changed to provide more infotainment. Networks lost ratings to the heavy competition of cable and home video. The diminishing audience caused the big three …show more content…

Jerry Springer now has an uncensored video with exerts from his daytime show that can't be shown on television. This video even has an extra ten minutes that, if you pay more, you can watch. The video consists of trash talk, violence, and nudity and people love to watch these of things. Then there are shows like The Oprah Winfrey Show that are still grouped as trash television shows but are considered "Good Trash". Oprah doesn't have fights or strippers on her show. The show is higher class than the others are. She has guests on that are respectable actors, actresses, comedians, etc. (Talked To Death). These shows may be trash but they bring in the ratings and the profits which is what this industry is trying to do. These infotaining shows are trash and exploit people anyone they can to make a profit, but the viewers must like it.

These talk shows have a tendency to go overboard and it can lead to trouble. A few years ago on Jenny Jones they had a male guest tell another who was a friend that he had a crush on this other person. The man who found out his friend wanted to be with him became very disturbed by this. A few days later he killed his gay friend. These shows are a bad way to bring things out about people. Who knows how they will react, especially when incidents like this one occur? These are private matters, not public entertainment. These matters shouldn't be on television, but stay in privacy. After the trial was over for that

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