This seems to be a crucial problem in all facets of the news media - people incentivize the news they want to hear, not the news they should hear. Back when ad

This seems to be a crucial problem in all facets of the news media - people incentivize the news they want to hear, not the news they should hear. Back when advertising was bundled across a whole paper or a whole news program, you could balance "Lindsey's Legal Troubles" with something informative that served the public good. But now that viewers "pay" by the story with advertising, we hit a Tragedy of the Commons - everyone incentivizes the fluff, and hopes someone else will incentivize the important research. We've removed the "all the news that's fit to print" standard and traded it in for "whatever you want to read about".