Same fear, different year

Many, at least among those who think, are postulating much of our national friction might simply be a by-product of the evolution of the declining mainstream media.  Deep invested reporting is expensive.  Opinions are cheap.  Fact-checked reporting is expensive.  Hot takes are cheap.  Appealing to a broad audience is hard.  Appealing to a targeted, but smaller, audience is easier.

Panic porn is also easier than science-based reporting.  On almost any novel scientific issue, the unknowns are greater than the knowns and speculative forecasting is easy.  And nothing sells like fear.  

Consequently the legacy media sells panic porn and they sell it to an ever smaller and ever more ideologically self-selected audience.  

I saw this example today of the longish history of that reliance on panic porn.

Click to enlarge.