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Comment by jasode | Hacker News Reader

The first leftmost column of most common causes of death (heart disease, etc) ... would be a "dog bites man" story.

The rightmost columns of media coverage (homicides, terrorism, plane crashes, etc) ... are "man bites dog" stories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_bites_dog

It's just the nature of journalism and headlines.

E.g. A frequent story that hits the front page of HN is "I'm quitting social media..."

But the much more common scenario of "I'm still keeping my social media account active today just like I did yesterday" ... is not submitted -- and nor would it be upvoted to the front page.

Real-life high frequency of normality doesn't make for compelling news.

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> It's just the nature of journalism and headlines.

It's incumbent on these organizations, which want to be seen as purveyors of truth, to make sure their readers end up with the proper understanding. If lots of people end up thinking men biting dogs is a bigger problem than dogs biting men, they've failed at that.

They really ought to put up some kind of corrective explanation (sort of like the NYT's disclosures of their lawsuit with OpenAI) in a prominent place of most articles that could leave a wrong impression on readers. That shouldn't be much of a problem for the NYT (which I'm most familiar), because its articles tend to be longer with much more background and context than those of its competitor the Wall Street Journal.

Former journalist here. I would argue that it's a shared-responsibility model. We, the public, are at least partly (and I would argue mostly) responsible for developing the media literacy that helps us end up with the right understanding, rather than requiring media outlets to publish general disclaimers and PSAs.

When I was in high school, I took a one-semester media literacy course where we examined topics like reputable sources, bias, sensationalism, moderating one's consumption, why watchdog reporting is so important but often goes unnoticed, etc. I would love to see more high schools offer this.

In this shared responsibility model, if the public is mostly responsible, then what can and should be done by the public to fix these issues? And how long will it take? And how would you propose getting the bipartisan support needed, or avoid it becoming a partisan political issue? Are more high school media literacy classes realistically going to fix this problem? Today it feels to me like agenda-driven manipulative reporting is fueling a decrease in media literacy, which appears to be precisely what some people want. What can the public realistically do to counteract this?

That's true, but I don't think the burden can reasonably fall completely on schools and individuals.

I think regular "general disclaimers and PSAs" and necessary to 1) reinforce and refresh the proper lessons and 2) give them to people who never had the proper lessons in the first place.

> It's incumbent on these organizations, which want to be seen as purveyors of truth, to make sure their readers end up with the proper understanding.

It's incumbent that readers/viewers actually want to properly understand the world: Fox News broadcasts the stuff that it does because people want to it, and their ratings / market share is evidence of it.

* https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/20...

* https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/msn...

* https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2025/06/10/the-politi...

If Fox doesn't supply what their audience demands (e.g., saying "Trump won the election") they'll go someplace else:

* http://archive.is/https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2020/...

    There are three ways to make a living:
        1) Lie to people who want to be lied to, and you’ll get rich.
        2) Tell the truth to those who want the truth, and you’ll make a living.
        3) Tell the truth to those who want to be lied to, and you’ll go broke.

* https://jasonzweig.com/three-ways-to-get-paid/

Is there a name for what happens to people who get all their information about the world from these types of sources?

(A similar thing is people who learn about interpersonal relationships from dramatic fictional stories with crazy situations and characters, and get the impression this is what "people are like")

The main reason for the difference in media coverage is the absence or weakness of a story. How can you build a story around a heart attack? :) On the other side, terrorist attacks, murders, car crashes, and other events are like fermentation jars for stories.

yesss! this x 1000

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