“You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war.”
— William Randolph Hearst, 1897
It’s easy to assume that misinformation, media manipulation, and narrative shaping are recent phenomena. That something broke. That we’ve lost a golden age of truth and reason.
But the reality? This has always been the game.
From yellow journalism in the 1890s to war propaganda in the 1940s to talk radio in the 1990s, mass media has never been about simply “delivering the news.” It’s about influencing emotions, to capture attention.
And optimizing media to spike emotion, is very, very profitable.
So what’s different now?
The speed.
The scale.
And the fact that all of us are now part of the machine.
The Playbook Hasn’t Changed—Just the Tools
In the late 19th century, newspapers were locked in an arms race for readership. Sensationalism wasn’t a side effect; it was the business model.
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- Hearst’s newspapers exaggerated stories to push the U.S. into war with Spain.
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- McCarthy-era reports fueled anti-communist paranoia with little proof.
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- Tabloids in the 80s and 90s amplified rumors, transforming them into circulation gold.
The formula? Simple.
Outrage = Attention = Profit.
Today, that equation still works. But now, it’s algorithmic.
Instead of a newspaper editor deciding what makes the front page, a computer, which understands your preferences and profile, decides what you see...and what you don’t.
And what does the machine optimize for?
The same thing it always has: What gets the most engagement. What wins the most attention.
But here’s the key shift—we are now the editorial department, the distributor, and the audience.
Misinformation Vs. Disinformation
There’s an important distinction here:
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- Misinformation = Incorrect information, maybe shared by mistake.
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- Disinformation = Deliberately false or misleading information, designed to manipulate.
Or, said another way–accidental vs. intentional.
Both spread the same way: Because people react, share, and amplify.
The best-performing content online is often not the most accurate—it’s the most compelling.
And what’s compelling?
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- Fear (“They’re coming for you.”)
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- Tribalism (“People like us believe things like this. People like them are the ‘other’. The enemy.”)
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- Certainty (“The real truth they don’t want you to know.”)
Historically, this kind of messaging required a printing press, a radio station, or a TV network in order to spread and shape our culture at scale. Now? Anyone with a smartphone and an internet connection can play.
And that means the volume of misinformation is no longer bottlenecked by access. And editorial standards and responsibility are out the window.
Gatekeepers
Part of the attraction of the internet, and the promise of this age of unprecedented connection, is that traditional gatekeepers have left the building. You don’t need to get past the front gates of Paramount Studio’s to get your TV show made, you just need to hit the ‘publish’ button on YouTube.
The irony is, the existence of traditional media gatekeepers like editors, producers, studios, and publishers, meant a certain level of quality in our media was being delivered. A standard of quality that brought a LOT of us to the same place, in a similar headspace, for shared experiences with news and culture.
Walter Cronkite, the finale of M.A.S.H., Time Magazine, Oprah.
And if Oscar Mayer wanted to reach as many people as possible, to entice them to buy more hot dogs, they’d spend their advertising budget with media that brought the masses to the table.
- To appeal to the “mass” you have to appeal to the middle. To the average. To the opinions and tastes of as many people as you possibly can.
- If you lived on the edges with your media, outside of the “regular”–with extreme opinions or tastes, you were guaranteed to reach “less” (and possibly lose your broadcasting license along the way).
The guardrails and consequences faced by media, in the age of gatekeepers, directly influenced the form and the flavor of the media that was made.
But the gatekeepers are gone. And there’s an infinite amount of shelf space online for media to exist–far beyond 3 network TV channels, and a handful of major national newspapers and radio stations.
Who Wins Today?
Ask yourself a simple question:
Today–who benefits from me believing this?
Every piece of media exists in a system of incentives.
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- Traditional newspapers needed subscribers.
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- TV news needed viewers to sell ads.
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- Social media companies need you to keep scrolling—at all costs.
Which brings us to the uncomfortable truth about today’s media landscape:
The most profitable content is often the most divisive. The most enraging.
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- If keeping you angry keeps you scrolling, that’s good for business.
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- If keeping you tribal makes you loyal, that’s good for politics.
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- If keeping you distracted stops you from asking questions, that’s good for power.
So the real question isn’t just what’s true?
It’s who gains by my reaction to this?
Repeat After Me
This isn’t the first time media has reshaped public perception at scale.
Consider:
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- The invention of the printing press (1400s): Suddenly, information could spread faster than institutions could control it. The Reformation, the rise of nation-states, and massive societal shifts followed.
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- The rise of radio (1930s-40s): Leaders like Roosevelt and Churchill mastered it for mass persuasion. Along with The Third Reich and the Axis Powers.
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- The dominance of TV (1960s-90s): The Civil Rights Movement, the Moon Landing, Vietnam, the Gulf War—events shaped by what the camera showed and what it didn’t.
And now? We are living through the age of algorithmic influence.
It’s new in execution.
But the underlying mechanics? Same as it ever was.
So Where Do We Go from Here?
If media is shaped by incentives, and if incentives reward engagement over shared truths, then what can we actually do?
Not stop it.
Not fix it overnight.
But see it.
Recognize that your attention is a currency. That it’s a finite resource. And it’s being actively mined, and hunted by relentless apex predators.
Will you spend your attention on narratives designed to manipulate you?
Will you own what you choose to engage with?
Because the biggest difference between now and 100 years ago is this:
We don’t just consume media anymore.
We’re responsible for it.
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