The Conflict Entrepreneurs behind our broken politics

I have long become accustomed to what I call the “BTMF” reflex whenever a great, newsmaking calamity or outrage happens.

- Clarence Page

That’s short for “Blame the media first.”

As a long-tenured journalist, I try not to take it personally. Yet sometimes the complainers have a point, and we in the news business would do a better job and provide better public service if we listened.

That’s why amid the anger, fear, and recrimination that followed the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, a couple of timely words from Utah’s Republican Gov. Spencer Cox stayed on my mind: "conflict entrepreneurs.”

“I can’t emphasize enough the damage that social media and the internet are doing to all of us, those dopamine hits,“ he explained in a later interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”

”These companies, trillion-dollar market caps, the most powerful companies in the history of the world, have figured out how to hack our brains, get us addicted to outrage, which is the same type of dopamine, the same chemical that you get from taking fentanyl, get us addicted to outrage, and get us to hate each other.”

Cox makes an important point. As long as I’ve been a journalist, I have heard complaints about the media bringing more heat than light, even in the once-respected realms of print and broadcast.

But social media has amplified this tendency exponentially. Their algorithms are designed to capture and retain eyeballs, and few things do a better job than good old-fashioned outrage.