What makes something "controversial"?

[Rainwater]

My wife and I have discussed this quite often, whenever the news media labels a story or a person or a topic "controversial", and we have decided that most of the time
there is no controversy until the media creates one in order to make money.

[MissBarbara]

My wife and I have discussed this quite often, whenever the news media labels a story or a person or a topic "controversial", and we have decided that most of the time
there is no controversy until the media creates one in order to make money.

That's a great point. The words "controversy" and "controversial" seem to appear everywhere today.

A lot of this is fueled by the adversarial nature of many social media posts, which the media picks up on.

It also riffs on motifs like "if it bleeds, it leads" and "sex sells." Anything to get viewer eyeballs and sell ads.

Personally, I find it aggressively annoying when football/soccer pundits and fans label every use of VAR as "controversial."