In addition, the information overload community tends to rely on technical filters—the equivalent of trying to lose weight by rearranging the shelves in your refrigerator. Tools tend to amplify existing behavior. The mistaken concept of information overload distracts us from paying attention to behavioral changes.
The Information Overload Research Group, a consortium of “researchers, practitioners and technologists,” is a group set up to help “reduce information overload.” Its website offers a research section with 26 research papers on the topic, primarily focused on dealing with electronic mail and technology used to manage distractions and interruptions. If they mention user behavior at all, they’re focused on a person’s relationship with a computer and the tools within it.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I appreciate a good spam filter as much as the next person, but what we need are new ways of thinking and of coping.
Just as Banting triggered a wave of concern about diet as we shifted from a land of food scarcity to abundance, we have to start taking responsibility ourselves for the information that we consume. That means taking a hard look at how our information is being supplied, how it affects us, and what we can do to reduce its negative effects and enhance its positive ones.
Chapter 3. Big Info
“For 200 years the newspaper front page dominated public thinking. In the last 20 years that picture has changed. Today television news is watched more often than people read newspapers, than people listen to radio, than people read or gather any other form of communication. The reason: people are lazy. With television you just sit-watch-listen. The thinking is done for you.”
The year 1960 was the year that television became the most important thing in politics. After refusing to wear makeup and campaigning for hours beforehand, Richard Nixon appeared weary, sick, and sloppy next to the well-rested and confident John Kennedy. Seventy million people tuned into the first televised presidential debate, and after it was over, John Kennedy moved into the lead and never looked back.
Having learned his lesson, when he ran for president again in 1968, Nixon hired a 28-year-old local television producer from Cleveland to be the media advisor to his campaign. His name was Roger Ailes, and he’d take Richard Nixon from the sickly sideliner to the polished, professional candidate who made it to the White House.
We have to put this into context a bit: there weren’t two generations of people in America who grew up with televisions in the household like there are today. Television for many was as magical and mysterious as the Internet is now. It was a new frontier, and like the social media consultant’s relationship with Washington today, there was a rising class of consultants preaching the gospel of the new medium to candidates and politicians eager to get in on the action.
After the success of Nixon’s ’68 campaign, Ailes quickly rose to power inside and outside the White House. He launched Roger Ailes Associates to help right-of-center candidates get elected, and advised the president on media and political strategy. For Nixon, he did everything from directing the television broadcast of the White House Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony to suggesting that the administration infiltrate the George Wallace campaign in order to “guard their flank.”[26]
It was during the Nixon administration that Ailes had the idea for a “pro-administration news system,” recognizing that Washington was close to three major airports (Dulles, National, and Baltimore) and that video footage could get to any major media market in the country. Ailes believed that the media had become dominated by negativity and said that the failure of business leaders to translate their agenda into something that ordinary Americans could understand was responsible for a cancer that was killing America. It was the blueprint for what eventually became Fox News.
Today, if you ask the Democratic party establishment in Washington whom they hate the most, you’ll likely find Roger Ailes near the top of the list. In 1996, he was tapped by the News Corp chairman to launch and manage Fox News, now the number one cable news channel in the country. According to the New York Times,[27] Ailes’ network makes more money than CNN and MSNBC, plus the nightly news broadcasts of the major networks, combined.
In under a decade, Ailes quickly toppled the other news broadcasts with less money, fewer reporters, and far less infrastructure than anyone else. So how’d he do it?
Ailes knew two things that nobody else did: first, that cable news was different than broadcast news. Because there were more channels available on cable than broadcast, and because of the nature of the medium, you didn’t have to try to please all your viewers; you could pick and grow a niche audience. Second, like many other conservatives today, Ailes felt the media was eliminating his point of view; Ailes knew that cable could provide an alternative news source.
He couldn’t compete with CNN on news. He had to compete with them by providing a different choice altogether. Ailes built himself a media network that, in his mind, didn’t eliminate the conservative point of view, and he found that much of America wanted it. Ailes found himself in a perfect spot: building a super-profitable business that aligned itself with his values. For News Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch, it was even better. Ailes figured out how to build a hugely profitable cable news outlet without having to pay for the infrastructure of a CNN. Giving people what they want is far more profitable than giving them the facts. In his own words:
“I can’t look hip, but I don’t want to be hip. And yet, you talk about programming a channel—I could out-program these thirty-year-olds in terms of what needs to be on there, how to get to the audience, how to get to younger people. I speak at colleges. Whatever it is, I always tell them, look, I can out-program you. I’ll challenge them all the time.”[28]
Now, presiding over the Fox News empire, Ailes doesn’t want to make news—that’s not what he’s good at. What he wants to do is give people what they want: entertainment and affirmation.
The Pew Center for Excellence in Journalism[29] estimates that Fox News spends 72% of its budget on program expenses (expenses tied to specific programs, like host salaries) and 27.8% of its expenses on administrative expenses (things like newsrooms). CNN, on the other hand, spends 56% of its expenses in the administrative category, and 43.9% on program expenses. CNN has a total staff of 4,000 people working in its studios and 47 bureaus. Fox News has 1,272 members of staff in just 17 bureaus.
The strategy is simple: it’s cheaper to pay one media personality a two million dollar salary than it is to pay 100 journalists and analysts $40,000 a year. What’s better, people like hearing their beliefs confirmed more than they like hearing the facts. For Murdoch and Ailes, it must have been like discovering the McDonald’s business model. People like french fries more and they’re cheaper to make than steamed broccoli! That’s sound business.