Chapter 4
Rage Merchants

Political extremists and would-be autocrats are not the only people who benefit from inciting panic and fear. There is big money to be made in peddling powerful emotions. The Music Man’s Harold Hill, after all, wasn’t interested in power. He wanted to earn a quick buck. In the world of the Internet and social media, skillfully inciting or inflaming panic and outrage can bring an ordinary person wealth and fame.

And you are the target. Some people take the bait. Others tune out the noise and disengage from politics entirely, which creates a new problem: widespread apathy. The ideal response is to filter out the noise and engage with politics in a more productive way. But that’s not easy, particularly when the demagogues are deliberately trying to trigger panic.

Panic is a sudden, intense reaction to a threat in the environment. It is a basic, primal emotion rooted in the evolutionary older parts of the brain and linked to survival and self-preservation. Panic triggers a fight-or-flight response. For most of our evolutionary history, we lived in proximity to predators. If a cave dweller was out gathering nuts and berries and heard a threatening noise, panic would get the cave dweller to safety. Panic can therefore serve a useful purpose.

One evening, a raccoon came over the fence and got into a fight with our 12-pound terrier. I had about one second to respond. I dashed outside and shouted to startle the animals, which gave them a moment to separate. I then did something I would have never thought I could do. I picked up a large, plastic Adirondack chair, lifted it over my head, and hurled it at the raccoon. I don’t know whether the chair hit him or just scared him, but while the chair was still bouncing on the patio, the raccoon scrambled over the fence and ran away.

The dog required a visit to the vet for stitches and shots. Years later, I still tell the story in disbelief. “I threw a chair at a raccoon!” I am a very small human being. I was able to hurl that chair and aim accurately because I was in a panic and focused on the emergency, which meant I didn’t have time to think about what I was doing. Panic and adrenaline saved my dog, who should have selected flight over fight, but try explaining that to a terrier who probably thought he saved the day.

Panic is useful in the face of immediate danger. There is no time to think, and overthinking an emergency can lead to paralysis. That’s why demagogues try to send people into a panic. A person in a panic does not reason well because rational thought is impaired. If you told me, “Throw this chair at that raccoon” and there was no immediate danger, I’d refuse.

On the other hand, when confronted with a fight between a raccoon and the family dog, this would not be the appropriate response:

When it comes to political matters, we’re usually dealing with events beyond our direct experience. Effective responses rely on the rational and deliberate parts of the brain. Civilians of an occupied country cannot mount an effective resistance while in the throes of panic. An effective resistance requires a cool head and strategic planning. The leaders who have done the most to improve our world thought strategically, a feat impossible when panic takes over.

Anger, like panic, is a primal emotion rooted in survival instincts. While panic triggers a fight-or-flight response, anger readies a person to confront danger head on.

Outrage is different. Outrage engages more evolved parts of the brain associated with social interactions, moral reasoning, and concepts of justice. Outrage brings in a sense of fairness and moral judgment. Outrage is more contagious and prolonged than anger. It has a group-oriented, public-facing nature, often aligning with collective calls for justice.

Wait, you may be thinking. Aren’t calls for justice good for democracy?

Calls for justice can be good for democracy, and outrage can lead to positive social reform. Outrage can also lead someone to justify rule-breaking. It can lead people to justify cruelty. It can lead to revolution, violence, and unpredictable outcomes. Unless the goal is to destroy an existing power structure or start an actual war, prolonged collective outrage is risky.

Moreover, people who experience extended fear and outrage are at risk of going into ideological spirals. Continual outrage, particularly when coming from multiple sources, can turn people against each other and set up the kind of chaos that demagogues and would-be dictators can use for their benefit.

Information Revolutions Enable Rage Merchanting

The first information revolution in modern history was the invention of the printing press. The second was the Internet. Both revolutions allowed misinformation, disinformation, and destructive rage to spread at dangerous levels.

In 1455, after Gutenberg invented the printing press and printed his first book, a Latin-language Bible, he reportedly said, “God’s word shall be carried far and wide.”

God’s word was not the only thing carried far and wide.

Before the invention of the printing press, people got their news from town criers, who were appointed by local authorities. Their job was to announce new decrees, laws, and important events. Written letters were another source of news, but they were almost exclusively exchanged between scholars and members of the upper classes who had the leisure to write letters. Book ownership was limited to those with wealth. Written material disseminated to the public had to be painstakingly copied by hand. The average person was not confronted with written material on a large scale until the invention of the printing press.

Broadsides, which became common after the invention of the printing press, were papers printed on one side and distributed widely. They often contained important news and information, but just as often, they spread destructive lies and malicious gossip to a population untrained in evaluating the reliability of sources. When broadsides were first distributed, unsubstantiated rumors flew. Political unrest was fomented.

While the printing press didn’t cause the Protestant Reformation, it was the most important driver of it because it allowed the reformist ideas to be disseminated at an unprecedented speed and scale. People swept up in the moment took to the streets in anger. The church also tended to respond too quickly and in too heavy-handed a manner. All this ignited violence and religious wars that fractured Europe for centuries.

Similarly, the invention of the printing press was a pivotal factor in allowing the conspiracy theory of blood libel to spread widely across Europe. This was the conspiracy theory that Jewish people murdered Christian children to use their blood in making Passover matzos.

Eventually, people learned to evaluate written sources. Once books and reputable publications became widely available, consumers of news came to understand that a broadside nailed to a tree very likely had less credibility than a book or publication by a respected scholar and publisher.

Yellow Journalism

Newspaper reading became widespread between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries as literacy rates rose.

By the late nineteenth century, news outlets were competing for readers. Publishers in need of readers discovered that sensational and rage-inducing material sold more newspapers and magazines, which gave rise to a style of news coverage known as yellow journalism. This new form of journalism emphasized sensationalism, bold headlines, and creative presentation over facts.

Yellow journalism reached its peak in 1898 after the United States deployed the USS Maine to Havana  in a show of U.S. military power. On February 15, 1898, an explosion sank the ship. The initial report from the Cuban colonial government, confirmed by witnesses, was that the explosion occurred onboard. Both William Randolph Hearst and his rival Joseph Pulitzer had been fueling anti-Spanish sentiment to sell newspapers. Following the sinking of the Maine, both Hearst and Pulitzer published inflammatory rumors, stirring public outrage with accusations of a Spanish plot to destroy the ship.

Eventually, there was a public reaction against yellow journalism. This prompted the rise of a new kind of reporting that was serious and fact-based. Tabloids continued, but eventually they were relegated to racks at the supermarket and were widely known to be mostly—if not entirely—fiction.

From the 1940s until the 1980s, there was only a handful of mass-market media outlets. As a result, media producers sought to appeal to as wide a swath of the American public as possible typically by offering viewers what NBC vice president Paul Klein called “the least objectionable programming.” Programming was neutral, calm, and factual. Broadcasts and major publications reached a large enough audience so no attempt was made to sensationalize the news. Sets were boring. Anchors like Walter Cronkite recited facts.

The three major broadcast networks—ABC, CBS, and NBC—were subsidized from commercial advertisements and the profits from highly rated prime-time dramas. The evening news was thus available to anyone with a television set. People in that era typically received their news once or twice a day, either through a morning or evening newspaper or via the evening broadcast. At the same time, large circulations and revenue from advertisers kept the price of newspapers low. Consumers absorbed the day’s news and then went about their business.

Media reporting from the 1940s through the 1960s fueled some of the rapid changes I’ve talked about in the era beginning in the 1950s. Iconic images disseminated widely in the media included the body of Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old boy lynched in Mississippi. Another photograph captured Elizabeth Eckford, a fifteen-year-old girl taunted by an angry white mob as she attempted to attend Central High School after the school was ordered to integrate following the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

These images were seen by a great many people who had never fully considered civil rights issues. Suddenly, their sympathy—and yes, their outrage—was aroused. Because those images shocked the conscience of a significant portion of the population, the media coverage helped galvanize nationwide support for civil rights.

Although the goal was neutral reporting, social conservatives complained that their views were not being represented in the mainstream media. Given this, it may seem surprising that conservatives were responsible for abolishing the Fairness Doctrine, which required, among other things, that broadcast networks devote time to contrasting views on issues of public importance. However, some fiscal conservatives believed that producers should be allowed to include whatever they wanted and should not be compelled to go against their judgment by federal regulations. In 1985, FCC chairman Mark S. Fowler, a lawyer who had served on President Reagan’s campaign staff, released a report stating that the doctrine hurt the public interest and violated the free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. The idea was that broadcasters should be allowed to do what they please.

We know from the Zenger trial in 1735 that freedom of the press was one of the founding conditions. It is therefore not surprising that conservatives would jealously guard that particular freedom.

The FCC’s report that the Fairness Doctrine violated the First Amendment was controversial, including among some conservatives, who argued that the Fairness Doctrine was the only thing that kept networks from lambasting Reagan’s economic policies. But the FCC panel voted to repeal the Fairness Doctrine. Congress, which was in the hands of Democrats, passed a bill to prevent this, but Reagan vetoed the bill. Reagan, like Fowler, believed that the Fairness Doctrine represented a form of control and censorship over what media outlets could do.

The Return of  Yellow Journalism

Less than one year after the Fairness Doctrine was repealed, Rush Limbaugh launched his radio show. He presented himself as a conservative alternative to mainstream media. He was also an entertainer. In his words, “I happen to have great entertainment skills.” He was intentionally incendiary, making comments like these: “Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women access to the mainstream of society,” and “Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?”

He soon amassed a large audience and earned tens of millions of dollars annually. At the peak of his career in the 1990s, he had an estimated 20 million listeners. In 2018, Forbes listed his income as $84.5 million.

Much of Limbaugh’s audience used his show as their primary source for news, marking the start of media fragmentation. The fracturing of the media market accelerated in the late 1990s with the introduction of cable news networks: CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. Keeping in mind the limitations of political spectrums, I will refer to Fox News as targeting right-wing audiences and MSNBC as targeting left-wing audiences. They are known as partisan news shows. If we understand “news” to mean “factual”—or as close to factual as possible given that biases necessarily creep in—the label “partisan news” is a contradiction in terms.

Something like this happened before. During the Partisan Press Era (1790s to 1820s), the idea of journalistic objectivity did not exist. The Federalist Party, one of the two major political parties at the time, controlled its own newspaper. Meanwhile, the Democratic-Republicans, the other major party, controlled a different newspaper. To stay informed, people read both newspapers, contrasted the views, and decided where they stood.

The rise of cable news programs created a twenty-four-hour news cycle, which meant lots of time to fill. Meanwhile, news itself had to be made profitable because cable news shows didn’t have revenue from successful sitcoms to subsidize news reporting. To generate revenue, cable news shows had to find a way to keep viewers glued to the screen. Sets became glitzy. Hosts became performers. To hold the attention of audiences, cable news introduced what Dannagal Goldthwaite Young, in her book Wrong! How Media, Politics and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation, calls the partisan pundit. She says this:

The phenomenon of the “partisan pundit” is a useful television (especially cable) news routine that embraces the conflict frame while offering emotionally evocative performances of partisan identity. Pundits are talking heads who appear on the news not to “report” news but to talk about the news.

Cable news programs frequently assemble panels of pundits (for example, journalists, experts, and partisan commentators) who argue about the topic, tie that topic to broad themes in the culture war, and typically do so with the “in your face” interpersonal conflict style that increases viewer engagement while also increasing viewers’ hostility toward the other side.

Young describes the characteristics of TV pundits like this:

Pundit panels are characterized by performances of intellectual arrogance or “I am not listening because I just want to show I’m right.” Intellectual arrogance plays well on television, whereas intellectual humility does not. In fact, we rarely see intellectual humility modeled in our mediated political world. When we do, it’s from the occasional appearance of scientists—people trained to never prove things or remove themselves from doubt. They don’t speak in absolutes or forevers. They speak with caveats and conditions and often answer with “Time will tell” and “for now this seems to be the case.”

Intellectual arrogance is one of the markers that distinguishes ideological thinkers from those with more flexible thinking. Those with intellectual humility are more flexible thinkers. The problem is that intellectual humility isn’t entertaining. “Give me a minute to think about that” followed by a deep contemplative silence is boring. On the other hand, watching people argue and pound tables with their fists can be riveting.

Not all commentators who appear on cable news deliver bias-confirming, emotionally evocative performances. That would be predictable and boring. There are balanced and thoughtful commentaries. Scholars are often invited on the shows. Some regular commentators are thoughtful and measured, but it’s the emotionally laden performances that are most memorable. Neuroscience explains why. The amygdala, the emotion processor in the brain, becomes highly active during a rage-filled performance. That releases stress hormones such as noradrenaline and glucocorticoids that “tag” the experience as important for long-term storage. Calm, nuanced performances, on the other hand, fade because the brain treats them as less significant.

Partisan pundits now include a new category of show people: TV lawyers. Peter Arenella, a UCLA law professor emeritus and one of the first TV legal pundits for ABC news, wrote a piece that appeared in the University of Chicago Legal Forum in 1998 called “The Perils of TV Legal Punditry.” In it, he delivered a scathing account of how TV lawyers are entertainers who must “evoke strong emotions in the audience.” Arenella saw that outlets needed viewers, so they needed to provide content that would sustain readership and viewership. They therefore needed pundits who were willing to speculate and put forward gripping theories. Arenella later offered this mea culpa (which I am quoting with his permission):

I worked for a major network in the 1990s. I started by commenting on high-profile Los Angeles criminal cases —Rodney King, McMartin, Menendez brothers, and OJ’s criminal/civil trials. I either attended these trials, or I closely observed them. The network wanted to expand my role by using me to comment on national high-profile criminal cases that I had not watched. These were cases where I could only rely on media accounts by lay journalists who did not understand the legal complexities involved. I took the work.

My reckoning came when impeachment charges were filed against President Clinton for lying about a sexual affair with one of his staff. A producer wanted me to debate Alan Dershowitz, my former teacher at Harvard Law School. Initially, I refused. I pointed out that, as a professor of criminal law, my expertise was not in our impeachment history, which meant I would be commenting as a private citizen. My producer replied, “Peter, our demographics show that our viewers see you as a more objective academic with no particular political interest in the outcome of this process.”

To my regret, I did that interview. That was when I realized I had fallen prey to the seductive power of being anointed a “national expert” on all legal issues. Embarrassed by my decision to do that interview, I quit my ABC consulting position and returned to my real passion: teaching and writing about important and troubling criminal law issues.

When I started working for ABC News, I naively believed that I could educate the viewing audience about complex criminal law issues. What I learned is that TV legal commentary usually legitimates whatever TV producers view as the current audience consensus about some high-profile case. Instead of educating the public, far too much televised legal commentary simply serves as a mirror that reflects back to its particular audience what it already believes.

What Arenella describes is programming that confirms the viewers’ pre-existing biases, which neuroscientists tell us is both pleasurable and addictive. Cognitive bias is the term for the tendency to seek out and favor information that confirms a person’s existing beliefs. Information that confirms our beliefs can trigger the release of dopamine, the “feel-good” neurotransmitter. Having our biases confirmed feels good, so we want more.

Tufts University professors Jeffrey Berry and Sarah Sobieraj, authors of The Outrage Industry: Political Opinion Media and the New Incivility, explain that what they call the outrage industry—which includes cable news programs, political blogs, and talk radio—encourages “agent provocateurs,” a phenomenon that was a nearly unthinkable risk in the era of the least objectionable programming. Rush Limbaugh, an agent provocateur, was obviously not interested in attracting a wide audience. He was interested in captivating and keeping his niche audience, which was large enough to allow him to charge high rates to advertisers.

Dannagal Goldthwaite Young cites a New York Times piece about Fox News’ internal “minute-by-minute rating data.” The data, which record real-time audience ebb and flow, allowed Tucker Carlson, who hosted a nightly political talk show from 2016 to 2023, to adjust his script as the show was in progress to get the most reaction from his audience. His goal was to trigger strong emotional responses.

A 2013 Pew Research Center study found that 85 percent of MSNBC’s programming was commentary or opinion. Fox News did better with 55 percent  commentary or opinion and 45 percent  factual reporting. CNN was more balanced, with 46 percent  commentary and 54 percent factual reporting.

The problem, of course, as confirmed in a 2024 study by Jeffrey J. Mondak, a professor of political science, is that many Americans have a difficult time distinguishing fact from opinion.  That means a great many Americans are getting opinions about the news but think they are getting facts. What they are getting are bias-confirming and rage-inducing performances.

This study also found that political leanings influenced what people believe to be facts as opposed to opinion. In the words of Professor Mondak, “As partisan political views grow more polarized, Democrats and Republicans both tend to construct an alternate reality in which they report that their side has marshaled the facts and the other side merely has opinions.” In other words, what psychologists call confirmation bias is at work.

Popular cable news hosts achieve star status. In the words of Berry and Sobieraj, “Unlike a conventional news program, in which the news itself is central, and anchors are often replaced, there would be no Rachel Maddow Show without Rachel Maddow.”

These hosts are not reporters. They do not break news. “Instead, they reinterpret, reframe, and unpack news from the headlines, political speeches, or claims made by other outrage hosts.” News reporters earn about $60,000 per year. After taking a pay cut in 2024, Rachel Maddow earned $25 million annually.

MSNBC hosts sometimes repeat for their audiences what someone over there at Fox said. The Fox quotations generally come from Fox agent provocateurs and are selected for the MSNBC audience for outrage purpose. In other words, the most outrageous claims will be selected.

Right-wing media will do the same thing. A right-wing host will select something said by a left-wing agent provocateur, which leads right-wing viewers to believe that everyone on the left is completely unhinged.

That not only outrages the target audience, but also leads the audience to believe that all people on the other side hold the same outrageous view. Keep in mind that the sizes of these cable news audiences are relatively small. At its height, MSNBC had about three million viewers. Fox has drawn audiences as large as seven million. That’s a lot of people, but not relative to the 174 million people who voted in the 2024 election. In addition, these audiences are mostly people of retirement age. The median age of the CNN, Fox, and MSNBC audiences is, respectively, 67, 68, and 71. Thus, portraying all voters as holding the most outrageous views presented on Fox or MSNBC is misleading.

Conspiracy Theories

Dannagal Goldthwaite Young explains how the current media environment is driving an appetite for conspiracy theories. She offers this definition of a conspiracy theory:

Conspiracy theories are allegations that remain unsubstantiated. They attempt to explain the ultimate causes of significant social and political events and circumstances with claims of secret plots by two or more powerful actors. They also assume that powerful people operating in the shadows are bad actors deliberately keeping the public in the dark.

Young describes how conspiracy theories evolve:

• People face a situation that is confusing or seems incomprehensible.
• They look for a way to assign blame.
• They grasp onto an easy-to-understand theory that assigns blame.
• The theory will be reinforced if people in their community and people they identify with (or look to as an authority) also hold the theory.
• Holding a conspiracy theory gives them a renewed sense of energy. Instead of feeling out of control, they have an explanation.
• Fueled by anger, they become defiant—but they have a direction. They feel they have agency. They can get behind a banner. They feel back in control.

Notice that a conspiracy theory doesn’t have to be unhinged. It doesn’t have to be about faked moon landings or implanting microchips in vaccines. It simply needs to assign blame for a confusing situation. Also, notice that conspiracy theories arise when people face a situation that is confusing or seems incomprehensible. The modern world of globalism is confusing to a lot of people. Our legal system has grown so complex that most people do not understand it. The complexity of the modern world, therefore, gives rise to conspiracy theories.

Young makes clear that conspiracy theories arise in both left-leaning and right-leaning media ecosystems. Berry and Sobieraj agree that outlets that target left-wing audiences and outlets that target right-wing audiences use the same tactics, but Berry and Sobieraj say this:

Our data indicate that the right uses decidedly more outrage speech than the left. Taken as a whole, liberal content is quite nasty in character, following the outrage model with accusations, conspiracy theories, and ridicule. Conservatives, however, are even nastier.

Right-wing media is better at all things outrage, including making money. Back when Rush Limbaugh was earning $59 million annually, liberal outrage manufacturers were only in the single-digit millions.

Enter Stage Right, the Performance Master of Outrage, Donald Trump

Into this environment came Donald Trump, a product of the current media environment. Before running for President, he was a reality TV show host. He therefore understands how this all works. Among the things he understands is that the way to get more media coverage is to be as outrageous as possible. Remember that Trump is not conservative. He doesn’t want to conserve anything. He wants change, and he wants it fast. He therefore benefits from continually stoking outrage. He pulls people into an outrage cycle that looks like this:

• He does something outrageous that shocks or enrages his critics.
• The same act thrills his supporters because it carries symbolic significance. The act, in some form, lands a blow on the liberal establishment.
• When his critics exhibit a strong reaction, his supporters feel an even greater thrill because he is proving he can take on the enemy. “Trump is a radical,” they say approvingly. “He is upsetting the applecart. He is fighting for us.”
• Meanwhile, Trump keeps himself center stage and controls the conversation.

Trump enlarged the public appetite for news. People before Trump who had never followed the ups and downs of politics tuned in and remained glued to their screens to see what outrageous thing he would do next.

In 2015, MSNBC had 132,000 prime-time viewers. Then Trump happened, and MSNBC experienced a bonanza. By 2020, MSNBC had a whopping 2.2 million viewers. Overnight, MSNBC cable news hosts became left-wing heroes. Their social media followings skyrocketed. Social media influencers who nobody had ever heard of before were born, spreading outrage over Trump’s latest antics and quickly amassing large followings. This has been called the Trump Bump. Former CBS executive Les Moonves said this about Trump’s impact on ratings during the early stages of the 2016 election cycle: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”

New online media outlets were created to feed the sudden appetite for news. These new outlets didn’t break news; they aggregated news that someone else broke. Some news outlets and accounts did nothing but offer minute-by-minute reporting of each outrageous thing Trump did or said.

Notice what is happening: Media markets are fragmenting into smaller and smaller units. As media markets fragment, outlets compete for viewers, and we have the rise of a new and improved form of yellow journalism.

It was common in left-leaning circles to mock Trump’s word salads and indecorous behavior. He wrote in all caps on social media. He talked in circles. How, his critics wondered, did such a figure of absurdity become President?

In Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump, Texas A&M University professor Jennifer Mercieca stood against the crowd of Trump-mockers and argued that Trump’s gaffes are not gaffes. She pointed out, for example, that he effectively uses a device known as ad populum (“appeal to the crowd”) by deliberately positioning his lack of political correctness as genuineness. He positions speaking in a manner acceptable to the mainstream as being “scripted,” which he then equates with going along with corruption. The result is that the more outrageous his comments, the more “truthful” he appears to his supporters and the more they admire him.

A Trump supporter told me once, in an approving tone, that Trump “tells it like it is.” I asked, “He tells what like it is?” She turned away. She didn’t have to say it aloud because Trump was saying it for her.

Maybe, just maybe, Trump is fooling his critics who think he’s a fool.