charlatainment 

Mass media programming characterized by its use of a charlatainer (i.e., a charlatan (malicious trickster; a fake person, especially one who deceives for personal profit) who actively develops and exploits a larger audience through a role in the public media by enhancing the entertainment "value" and, hence, the commercial potential, of news topics to the detriment of the veracity of the message and, as a result, the health, utility, and likelihood for progress respecting many issues which arise in public policy discussions. Charlatainment works because it is an especially insidious form of terminal addition, which results in a passionately rabid but woefully malinformed and/or excessively inflamed audience clinically disinclined to thereafter engage in reasonable discourse...apparently due to a permanent scarring of the reality lobe...

Bob said he got all of his news information via charlatainment, because he enjoyed being freed from having to think for himself, having to consider that public issues are often intrinsically complex, and because he missed the pep-rally-like fervor of being unified with a group of think-alikes engaged absolutely against a common, token adversary...and because, given the permanent damage to his reality lobe, sound-bite-level analysis was all that he remained capable of.

charlatainment by texlex61 April 22, 2010