It might seem a big deal, Sky News admitting that it made a terrible mistake giving a platform to Blair Cottrell, the human protein slab, convicted criminal and Adolf Hitler superfan. But all of this has happened before on Sky News After Dark, and all of this will happen again.

Cottrell’s appearance was not a mistake, or an aberration. It was a perfectly routine part of Sky’s business model. When the working journalists clock off for the day, the network ceases to report information. Instead it offers meaning. A human centipede of jabbering trolls tries to explain the world in a way that identifies who are friends, who are enemies, and what must be done to protect the former from the latter.

Blair Cottrell's appearance on Sky News was no aberration. Credit:Matthew Lynn

Sky News After Dark isn’t a news operation, it’s a digital Nuremberg Rally. That’s how somebody like Cottrell ends up looking like a legitimate contributor to the national discourse, at least for the short time he’s in studio framed by green screen effects and the ever present chyron.

Nor is there any mystery about why otherwise intelligent professionals would debase themselves and their network by interviewing the likes of Cottrell. The old advertising based media business model has been shattered by new media disruptors such as Facebook and Google. Sky, like everyone in news, is desperately looking for a new way to make money. People might not want to pay for basic information any more, but they will still hand over their credit card details to anyone who can confirm their biases. And the stronger that confirmation bias? The more addictive and profitable feeding it becomes.