Climate of Hate? Cable News and the Economics of Violent Talk

“It is in the economic interest of cable news and talk radio to outrage their audience, to turn their segments into car wrecks that we can’t take our eyes away from,” Martin Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center and professor at the USC Annenberg School, told TheWrap.

He added: “The economics favor the extreme point of view and the paranoid claims. You get better numbers and you can control the expense side by reducing a reporting staff.”