3 ms·
The news reflects what we're interested in. Most deaths aren't interesting.
by randyrand 7y ago
The news reflects what we're interested in. Most deaths aren't interesting.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- GarrisonPrime 7y agoThis makes me ponder: The human brain is wired to be interested in novel, relatively unusual things. So, almost by definition, this implies humans are wired to be relatively disinterested in truth. :/
- Swizec 7y agoWe love surprising truth. We yawn at everyday life.
- BurningFrog 7y agoWe're interested in new truths. Old ones we already know.
- cortesoft 7y agoThis has a common term in the news industry: Man Bites Dog Since 'newsworthy' is synonymous with 'unusual', we end up thinking rare things are actually common, since we only cover rare things in the news. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_bites_dog_(journalism) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_bites_dog_(journalism)
- _pastel 7y agoThat's why I love that this article also compared against search trends, which is another way of measuring what we are interested in. Consider "road incidents". Search is disproportionately higher than deaths - we are definitely interested! But news coverage is extremely low, because what is newsworthy about any specific road incident? It's more naunced than "the news reflects what's interesting". Or maybe NYT and The Guardian are just missing out on a big area of reader interest, and they could increase engagement by running more stories about road incidents!