Hacker News Reader

Comment by HarHarVeryFunny | Hacker News Reader

Well, yeah.

TV stations are out to make money, not to inform society. All their programming, news included, is designed to attract eyeballs, hence money, and sadly sensationalist and titillating stories is what most people want to see.

View on HN

It's like my journalism professor told me since he used to be a news anchor ... "If it bleeds, it leads".

Man...... when did these press companies get so out of touch with reality that they wouldn't even pay respect to the fact that people are actually dying here. So sad.

We the people are the root cause. If we cared about what people really die of, press companies would write stories about that, to get our attention.

It's really that simple.

And the only institution with a mandate to educate and inform just got defunded.

... And why did they get defunded?

As a lesson to other government funded entities about the power of government and to please voters who are easily manipulated with mere accusations that align with long held unproven beliefs

Because the media sold a story to one set of the population - the topic of this thread.

> TV stations are out to make money, not to inform society.

Inform about what? Would you tune in to hear a daily report about how many old people people died of cardiac issues today? I doubt the breakdown here is different for NPR. Or BBC, or whatnot.

It's not a failure of capitalism, it's just what we crave.

A system that rewards our worst instincts is exhibiting a failure. There are worse systems, sure. But capitalism has its own downsides and this is one of them.

Do you really think it would be informing society if news stations constantly reported the number of cancer deaths that occurred in the last day?

Yes. News should ideally report on the reality of the situation affecting a community of people at a given time

Reply on news.ycombinator.com