The public is cynical because it has been taught to be cynical. We learn our politics overwhelmingly through the news and talk radio media. So, what is the aim of the political information most Americans are consuming? Is it to serve the public interest? Is it to move people to act and work together as citizens? Is our news, on the most basic level, about encouraging shared responsibility or an obligation to work toward empathy in the service of greater justice or genuine liberty and more equal opportunity? It could not be any more clear after the year that we have all just endured that news is driven by profit and that the product it creates is shaped very specifically by that motive – and it is a very inadequate, even toxic product by the measure of how well it serves the public interest, and by that I include how well it works to inform the citizenry.

Adrienne Russell interviewed in Vice How we can make social media less blindingly awful in 2017

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