The other day we reported as one of the most widely distributed newspapers in Spain suggested that Reiki helped combat COVID-19. Various media We have managed to remove such atrocities.
But one wonders, then, how such an important media outlet can publish things like that (not to mention some of its Cons, the horoscope section...). In the background, It is part of its natural process as a means of communication. A process that all media in history go through: basically, from best to worst.
Five phases
Any new means of communication ends up going through the following phases:
- Negative forecasts by analysts or even by the inventor of the medium himself. With the advent of the telephone, it was said that it would end intimacy. That the radio made no sense. That cinema would not interest anyone. That there would not be enough demand for personal computers.
- A progressive assimilation at the social level. People start using these media and discover that they are interesting.
- A distribution of enormous cultural and material benefits in society. The media enlightens people, even some sectors of the social mass. For example, radio, in its origins, was based on programs that educated the people.
- A progressive commercialization of the environment. Advertising, competition, and profit motive arrive, and content creators begin to be tempted and influenced by these factors.
- A progressive devaluation of the environment in terms of cultural and material benefits in order to maximize commodification. The medium is no longer useful for what it was designed for, but rather to obtain more economic benefits (although without exaggerating too much so that the mark of compatibility that allows us to continue contracting advertising does not completely disappear).
In the end, @The vanguard has withdrawn his embarrassing article about the #reiki in view of #COVID19. Thanks to @damn_science and @SergioParra_ @xatakaciencia for warning. Now we hope that the diary of @Jordi__Juan post something serious about the topic
My tweet: https://t.co/0Z3EOrOF91 pic.twitter.com/K8N4vGakLz— Luis Santamaría del Río (@vaiconDios) January 21, 2021
These phases took place, for example, with the first major media: Gutenberg's printing press, year 1450
It also happened with the Telegraph, which has been compared as a kind of victorian internet. This device was invented by Samuel Finley Breese Morse, American, in 1832.
The same thing happened with the newspaper: the first ones had few pages and were very expensive, so they were only aimed at educated and rich people. Someone devised a new form of business that consisted of lowering the price by partially covering the costs of writing, printing and distribution by inserting advertising, which forced the addition of more pages (so that the advertising could be better distributed).
As more people bought newspapers, advertising profits increased, so editors soon realized that inserting sensational or morbid news increased sales, that is, profits, which, in turn, forced to put up more pages of superfluous news.
Or publish sensational and shocking news, although false, like those that the media magnate began to introduce William Randolph Hearst.
And, of course, the same has also happened with the publishing industry.
And now it's starting to happen, too, with some digital media (some platforms become vulgarized and other less vulgarized ones appear that will also end up becoming vulgarized). Even the blogs, born as a tool for the empowerment of society, finally 99.9% of them barely reached a tiny audience, because the masses prefer hooky news, clickbaits, the bad stuff of Perez Hilton, the viral, the meme, the "and you won't believe what happened next."
They are only commercial (or political) forces, blind and random, that reach with their tentacles to any medium. It is something like an unstoppable natural process. The following science fiction story may help you better imagine the process:
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The news
The media goes through the same phases (from best to worst)
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.