Talker’s Magazine Founder Calls Out Ratty Words, Noisy News

One longtime talk-radio maven has become openly vexed at his media peers for upping the often manipulative and calculated “noise’ in their news coverage to gain public attention and ratings.

So says Michael Harrison, founder of Talkers Magazine, an industry publication that tracks both trends and ratings in talk radio as well as “talk media” such as podcasts, reports The Washington Times.

Michael Harrison

“We live in an increasingly noisy world. The accelerating advancement of media technology, with its accompanying ‘everybody is a star’ syndrome, combine to make it increasingly difficult to get attention. By that, I mean real attention — the kind of attention that those in the professional media (and related) industries describe as ‘traction.’ Public conversation, as conducted in today’s media, has fallen victim to the noisy cocktail party syndrome,” Mr. Harrison wrote in an editorial featured in the aforementioned publication, which is published online and in print.

“Have you noticed how headlines — even when used by the editors of generally reliable platforms — have taken hyperbole to new lows of dishonest clickbait in order to get attention? Beware of two such words that are being spewed through today’s media to cut through the noise only to create even more noise in the process. In the world of science, it’s ‘terrifying.’ In the world of politics, it’s a ‘bombshell.’ These ratty words have infested our media sewers and should be avoided unless actually used in an honest and accurate manner,” Harrison said.