Why the News Isn't Really the News [Epipheo.TV]

Ryan Holiday, the author of, "Trust Me, I'm Lying," shares a bit about how he has manipulated media to get bogus, anonymous stories to the front-page of news media outlets. He wonders if many of our news stories can even be trusted because the system by which news outlets pick up their stories is flawed. In fact, the news may not really be the news at all.

We interviewed Ryan Holiday to find out more. The epiphany? If you're not paying for a product online, then you ARE the product.

CHECK OUT RYAN'S BOOK
"Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator," by Ryan Holiday
http://amzn.to/13cvGAH

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So you're cruising around the Internet and
you see a link to an article from some trusted

news source and it's got a really intriguing
title, so you read it. And later you find

out that that whole article was mostly false.
What you thought was news was really just

gossip or conjecture. So we've got Ryan Holiday
here. He's a media manipulator and he explains

how this happens.

So, so what I quickly discovered was that
the media was this sort of hierarchy or chain.

At the bottom you have small blogs who have
small readerships but correspondingly low

threshold for what they will and will not
publish. Say this blog publishes a rumor then

Business Insider or The Huffington Post or
Perez Hilton writes about. And now, because

of the stature of those sites, it becomes
something that people are talking about on

Twitter, on Facebook, on email, they're chattering
about it.

And what happens is producers for CNN, producers
for a right wing talk radio, journalists for

The New York Times -- where do they find out
the news? They're not out pounding the pavement

like it's 100 years ago. No, they're reading
what people are chattering about online.

And that cycle is hijacked by people like
me who say, "Okay, if this blog here has the

power to accidently start a media firestorm
by what it publishes, I'm going to get them

to publish something that benefits me."

I, I've sent them fake anonymous emails and
watched as that turned into front page stories.

The public isn't aware that this is how their
news is being made, but on both sides of the

divide -- on the marketing side and on the
news side -- neither is particularly concerned

with quality. They're concerned with what
will get attention.

And that's because of how blog sites and news
sites make money. First, they get a lot of

viewers to their pages. And then they sell
that view count to advertisers. So to get

more views you do stuff like...

Asking rhetorical untrue questions in a headline;
doing your fact checking after you've published

an article; gossiping; speculating; making
up a story from whole cloth.

But what if I want good, accurate news. I
mean, shouldn't news sites want to give that

to me?

Yeah, look, uh, I think the rule of thumb
is if you're not paying for it they don't

give a shit about you. They're loyal to their
advertisers.

If you aren't paying for it you aren't the
customer, you are really the product.