RANT AHEAD:
Quite a few times now, I’ve seen the complaint that “the news refuses to cover the story about the migrants’ sinking ship and focuses on the billionaires instead”.
This strikes me as totally unsurprising. 99% of all news sites are given by gathering clicks and eyeballs. The Titan story has it all:
- Billionaires
- Zany CEO with submarine with oddly sourced parts
- Tie in to one of the most famous shipwrecks of all time
- A story that’s technically easy to understand (the sub went underwater and was lost, you don’t need a degree in advanced physics to appreciate this)
- Some drama because they might have been underwater without oxygen vs. instantly dead due to decompression
- The possibility of an exciting sea rescue
vs the migrants’ story
- No one famous or of note on board
- This is by far NOT the first vessel lost in this manner
- No exciting twists
I’m sorry, but if I headed up a news room OF COURSE you will run the first story. It’s simply more exciting. This is NOT an example of class war or a personal vendetta against the poor.
If you are one of those who think the migrants story should be more closely followed why don’t YOU lead a discussion about it, volunteer your money and/or time to organizations that support migrants, etc.
It’s also a really boring complaint to see, because nearly ALL of the major news outlets DID cover the story, but guess what, it is far less engaging, so it gets less attention overall.
Don’t blame the news for what stories get big – blame the public and their fascination with these stories. The news outlets are only putting out what their audience wants to see.
Feel free to start a site that talks only about migration issues, but I think you’ll find it way harder to make money vs talking about clickbait.
My two cents:
I don’t think this is entirely true. Yes they’ll run with stories that get lots of engagement, but news agencies still have, well, agency. They can choose what to focus coverage on, even if it’s not the most lucrative story. They also have lots of room for how they want to cover a story, what angles they want to take.
While I agree that to an extent there’s a relationship from views to money to coverage, saying they’re “only putting out what their audiences want to see” is kinda reductive. They also play an important role in shaping what their audiences want to see. I’d say it’s important to be critical of what we’re being shown and what we’re not, and how different stories get spun.
One point I think we might agree on is that this also means that we should think critically about ourselves and our own reactions to the stories we’re presented with. For example, I know I have a tendency to get interested in these kinds of stories from the perspective of wanting to learn safety lessons for the future (same reason I keep up to date on US CSB reports). At some point, though, it became apparent that there were no (or not many) interesting safety lessons to learn here and I continued following the developments anyway. It’s worthwhile for me to consider why I did that, and taking that time to consider my own reactions here is a part of this same process of thinking critically about the news we’re shown.
Sure, they can, but the ones on the top tend to focus on what their readers want to read!