Steve Kerr believes media for profit is a bad recipe for a healthy country: ‘Fomenting anger and distrust’

In recent years, Steve Kerr has been one of the more outspoken personalities in the NBA, using his platform to address social and political issues.

As Kerr advocates for everyone to receive what he considers to be basic human rights, conservatives are quick to label him “woke” or anti-American. That’s a knee-jerk reaction that the Golden State Warriors‘ head coach partially blames the media for.

Kerr joined the latest episode of Kenny Mayne’s Hey Mayne podcast for Audacy. During the interview, Kerr and Mayne discussed the modern media machine and its impact on society.

“Media for profit didn’t use to be a thing,” Kerr (seen above at a Nov. 25, 2022 press conference) explained. “Media for profit these days is so bad. It’s so negative because it pulls people into those (red and blue) camps and reinforces the negative stereotypes of the other side. Meanwhile, these media companies are just churning out the dollars by fomenting anger and distrust. And it’s like, ‘This is really not a good recipe for a healthy country.'”

While the media certainly seeks to create polarizing headlines, its relationship with the country’s political divide also centers around the chicken or the egg analogy. Did the polarized media create a polarized world, or is it a product of the current divide? Do politicians feed the media, or do they feed off the media?

“I don’t think it was Trump,” Kerr said. “Trump definitely fed the fire, but the sort of lack of dignity in public discourse over the last couple of decades, I think that matters. There used to be more of a sense of decency, even if it was fake. At least people were treating each other well in public discourse. and now, all gloves are off. And it’s led to a pretty dark place for us.”

Clickbait media hasn’t done the fourth estate any favors in building the public’s trust, which is absolutely a bad recipe for a healthy country. But we may have been moving toward an increasingly polarized political world even without media for profit.

[Hey Mayne; photo from Darren Yamashita/USA Today Sports]