I get very annoyed when people blame the state of the world on The Media. Not because I think that The Media is some kind of infallible institution that is operating solely to make the world a better place. Far, far from it. I think The Media, on the whole, is driven exclusively by the desire to make money, with little to no regard for anything beyond doing so (including, unfortunately, actually reporting the truth).

And it’s not at all their fault.

It’s ours.

We get what we pay for, and we pay for sensationalism. We pay for sound bites. We pay for shoddy reporting that focuses on being first instead of being right. We pay for 24 hour news cycles that are filled with opinionated, blustering pundits. We pay for style over substance. We pay for a news cycle that looks more like The Real Housewives than Sixty Minutes.

We lap it up. Every. Single. Day.

So of course they give it to us. They have to if they want to survive. Look at the number of institutions who were once heralded as being stalwarts of integrity that are constantly diving deeper and deeper into the muck in an effort just to keep operating on a day-to-day basis. Why? Because we can’t be bothered to spend a little money to get the content that would have twenty years ago because we think that online should equate to “free.”

This, for the record, is also why we get the politicians we have. It’s not because of the media, and it’s not because of lobbyists, and it’s not because the Illuminati is pulling the puppet strings. It’s because we vote using the same criteria we use to choose what we consume for news and entertainment.

This is why manufacturing in the United States is a complete joke and why so much of our goods are produced in other countries. We want cheap TV’s, cheap phones, and cheap cars. We don’t care about the number of jobs that get lost or communities that are devastated because the companies in question cannot possibly produce the goods we want and the price we’re willing to pay. This is why we shop at Wal-Mart instead of the locally owned general store.

This is why so many restaurants struggle to provide quality food to their customers. We want a delicious, hand-made cheeseburger on a freshly baked bun with hand cut fries and a craft beer but we are only willing to pay $5 for it (oh, and let’s not forget how our gratuities decrease as the price of that burger goes up). This is why so many of the places we eat at that aren’t flat-out chain restaurants might as well be because their entire menu consists of food that can be purchased in bulk from Sysco.

It’s us. We have done this to ourselves. It’s our fault.

It is my fervent hope that we’ll come to our senses at some point and the market will respond accordingly, but as of right now all I can do is look around at the world and nod along with our old friend Pogo.