Because the newsworthy thing is about this guy, not about the autocrat. If NPR feels it's important enough to publish, then it should be either without a header

Because the newsworthy thing is about this guy, not about the autocrat. If NPR feels it's important enough to publish, then it should be either without a header or a relevant one. Just slapping on a random stock photo is bad journalism. > Why the real reasons do not matter for usual readers? They very much matter, I think. Of course the real reason matters, but the reason is not the "charges". (And as I said, the whole process might be of interest to some people, so correctly reporting can be a valuable service.) > Do you mean the Iranian regime is a-priori evil Dictatorships can do good things too, so no. For example providing healthcare, education, etc. Even shitty public services are better than nothing in many cases. And that includes policing too. (Despite all the rage about abolition of police we know that power vacuums likely lead to bad things.) That said when it comes to crackdowns on protest activity my prior for "dictatorship doing bad thing" is pretty fucking high. > Do you value the quality of the article not by its informativeness for the reader, but by level of "service" it makes to Hossein Shanbehzadeh? I value both. As a reader I don't want to read a hack job, and as readers' attention and time are very scarce I don't like the presence and proliferation of these low-quality pieces. (I am aware that it was likely even worse before. When people had fewer opportunities to check what the fuck the newspapers printed.) And if a piece is about someone then that someone deserves that the text does not selectively misrepresent facts, and handles topics with the care they deserve. I don't like that this guy's plight has become basically a tick in a checkbox for "make content", and particularly that it became clickbait. And of course he could think otherwise. Perhaps he thinks any press is good press. Maybe it helps his situation. But that's the question that I want to get information on, not about which branch of the kangaroo court he was dragged to. > ... as a news consumer I want to build adequate worldview, ... Me too, but as mentioned, time and attention are the bottleneck. And maybe my expectations for news is unrealistically high.