The goal of news media is not to provide a useful information stream, but to gather repeat views (follow the money). The news barons of the past foolishly conf

The goal of news media is not to provide a useful information stream, but to gather repeat views (follow the money). The news barons of the past foolishly conflated the two, or at least assumed the first was optimal at producing the second. Today, we’ve learned better — there are far more effective strategies available, largely by exploiting our natural search for drama. That is, the reporting was good at its goal of good reporting; but this was not the correct goal to have.