Hashtags Over Headlines In The Age Of Outrage!
By Gajanan Khergamker
Once upon a time, news had a sanctity of its own. It was not subject to the tyranny of taste nor the vanity of validation. A fact, no matter how inconvenient, was reported because it happened, and the citizen was expected to read, to reflect, and to react as part of an informed society.
The newsmaker’s responsibility ended with ensuring veracity, the reader’s began with absorbing it. That delicate balance, however, has been disrupted beyond recognition in the digital age, and the casualty is the very concept of news itself.
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The transformation did not happen overnight. First came the slow corrosion with the rise of television, where the pursuit of ratings forced news into formats that entertained rather than informed. The more sensational the content, the higher the TRPs, and soon, the line between information and spectacle began to blur.
Television, however, still operated within some measure of accountability. The newspaper in the morning, the prime-time bulletin at night, both maintained their claim to authority.
But then came the algorithm. Social media arrived, and with it, the complete democratisation of information. Theoretically, this should have been liberating: no gatekeepers, no middlemen, just raw access to voices and truths.
In practice, it unleashed the most dangerous distortion, where the worth of information is measured not by its accuracy but by its ability to engage.
Likes, shares, retweets, and views have become the surrogate indicators of value. The metrics of virality have usurped the measures of veracity. A deeply-researched report on corruption may be ignored simply because it unsettles, while a meme with half-truths can garner millions of impressions simply because it amuses. The dopamine hit of affirmation, not the sober pause of reflection, rules the new public square.
For the citizen, this shift has created a new kind of consumption pattern. One doesn’t read the news to be informed anymore; one reads, or rather, skims, for validation.
If the content aligns with one’s pre-existing beliefs, it is “liked.” If it flatters one’s worldview, it is “shared.” If it offends or bores, it is ignored.
In such a climate, inconvenient truths stand no chance. The reader has acquired the unprecedented power to dismiss reality with the flick of a thumb.
For the newsroom, the implications are devastating. To survive in a market where attention is the most precious commodity, portals are forced into compromise.
Headlines are not written for clarity but crafted as bait for clicks. Stories are truncated into bullet points because nuance is too heavy for the scrolling thumb.
And investigative pieces, once the soul of journalism, are drowned under a deluge of listicles, reels, and outrage-manufacturing posts.
The fourth estate, once described as the watchdog of democracy, now behaves like a jester in the king’s court, forced to amuse lest it be ignored. Truth, in this setup, has become secondary to traction.
Credibility has become collateral damage in the war for visibility. And readers, mistaking popularity for trustworthiness, amplify precisely what weakens the very foundations of a free press. History has seen journalism under siege before. From authoritarian regimes that censored inconvenient facts to propaganda machines that dressed falsehood as national interest, the news has always battled existential threats.
The tabloidisation of the 20th century, with its obsession with scandal and celebrity, too was an assault on serious reporting.
Yet, in each case, there remained an understanding, even grudging, that news was a public good, something distinct from entertainment or opinion.
The current crisis, however, is unprecedented because it is self-inflicted. It is not a government muzzle, nor an editor’s manipulation, but society itself that has downgraded news.
The citizen, seduced by convenience and addicted to validation, has abandoned rigour for rhetoric, fact for feeling. The public no longer demands accountability from power but affirmation from peers.
And so, the newsroom finds itself cornered. Does it continue producing news that no one “likes” and risk financial ruin, or does it surrender to the economy of clicks and compromise its soul?
Many have chosen the latter. Those who resist are condemned to obscurity, their work unread, their relevance eroded.
Is news then redundant? Not quite. Its essence - of recording, verifying, and disseminating truth - remains indispensable. Societies cannot function without it, democracies cannot survive in its absence.
In practice, news has been exiled to the margins, gasping for attention in a world where entertainment masquerades as information.
What is redundant, perhaps, is the assumption that truth alone will command respect. In today’s climate, truth needs marketing, facts need packaging, and news needs to compete for space in a carnival of distraction.
That, in itself, is the greatest indictment of our times: that the citizen, once the beneficiary of news, is now its executioner.
The irony is stark. By undermining news, society weakens its own foundation. A public that consumes only what it likes ceases to be informed, and an uninformed public is the easiest to mislead, manipulate, and control.
The death of news, if it comes, will not be the doing of power, but of people.
News, then, is not dead. It has been abandoned. And unless the citizen rediscovers the courage to face truths that don’t flatter, the fourth estate will remain a ghost - visible, perhaps, but stripped of its soul. Now, fact has become the first casualty. What was once the bedrock of journalism has been trampled underfoot by the spectacle of virality. Fake news, earlier dismissed as aberration, as an occasional crack in the edifice, is no longer the anomaly. It is the rule, the norm, the market leader.
It isn’t merely tolerated; it is rewarded. It isn’t called out; it is celebrated. A lie, packaged with wit or fury, fetches not scorn but shares.
Outrage translates to traffic, traffic to revenue, and revenue to replication. The cycle is so profitable that fakery doesn’t just survive, it scales.
Every fabrication that “works” is immediately cloned, amplified, and recycled, dressed in fresh fonts and new thumbnails, to lure more eyes, more clicks, more cash.
In this perverse ecosystem, truth becomes an unviable business model.
Why invest weeks in fact-checking when a hasty falsehood can deliver instant gratification? Why risk nuance when exaggeration guarantees traction? Why hold power accountable when distraction pays better?
And so, fakery doesn’t just dominate the discourse, it dictates it. What society consumes today isn’t information but performance; not fact but fiction scripted for profit.
The tragedy is not that people are deceived, but that they are delighted to be deceived.
(MediaMatters is a regular column by Gajanan Khergamker on media trends across the world written cynically, stoically, funnily even celebratorily but always Without Prejudice)
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