See also "I Hate the News" by Aaron Swartz http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews
"This seems to be true, but the curious thing is that I’m never involved. The government commits a crime, the New York Times prints it on the front page, the people on the cable chat shows foam at the mouth about it, the government apologizes and commits the crime more subtly. It’s a valuable system — I certainly support the government being more subtle about committing crimes (well, for the sake of argument, at least) — but you notice how it never involves me?"
Ironically, he did unfortunately end up as a news story in which the government did something bad and he was personally involved.
I kinda read that he broke the law and the government were prosecuting him for it.
Oh the irony.
If you care: What's at issue in the Aaron Swartz case is the proportionality of the government response to the infraction. Whether he committed a crime (or not) is largely a moot point.
I agree that most mass media news is a waste of time since you have no control over the stories or the level of detail. I think news via feed is a lot better; you have more power to investigate the things that actually matter to you.
Kind of sad, really. It ruins a good analysis with the stench of hyprocrisy.