I've had various family members die from all of the most common things in the top 2/3 of the causes of death. It sucks. But I wouldn't want there to be a story about it in the NY Times about it... because why would they do that?
They're journalists not doctors, treating heart disease and cancer isn't their jobs and it's not all that interesting to write about.
If they reported on heart disease as much as terrorism and homicide you might have things like properly funded healthcare and high quality food regulations, instead you get militarised police.
What the public perceives as a danger is more important than what flashy thing sells.
In all fairness, the unusual sells a lot better than the usual as news, so it makes sense that newsmedia goes for the former rather than the latter - any newspaper that reports based on prevalence and ignores the shock-effect of an event simply doesn't get read and goes bankrupt.
So in this specifically, as I see it the problem isn't that the newsmedia choses to report the unusual but that very few people have been taught to beware of one's natural falacy of confusing exposure (how much something is talked about) with actual impact - you can very visibly see it in how people react to governments implementing authoritarian anti-Terrorism measures, were the people who confuse exposure with impact actually support very authoritarian measures to supposedly combat Terrorism whilst the people who do not and instead actual check what's the impact of it tend to be against authoritarian measures because they trade a lot of everybody's Freedom for supposedly combating something which in most countries is has a lower death rate than slipping on a bathtub.
As I see it, were the press fails to uphold Journalistic Integrity is in refraining from reporting on certain unusuals, for example political corruption and certain actions of the ultra-wealthy (whilst choosing to report on other actions of them - see: celebrity culture).
IMHO the dynamic we see in this graphic which is really about impactful vs newsworth is pretty natural, what's not natural is the selectivity in reporting of different but equally newsworthy events.
I've had various family members die from all of the most common things in the top 2/3 of the causes of death. It sucks. But I wouldn't want there to be a story about it in the NY Times about it... because why would they do that?
They're journalists not doctors, treating heart disease and cancer isn't their jobs and it's not all that interesting to write about.
If they reported on heart disease as much as terrorism and homicide you might have things like properly funded healthcare and high quality food regulations, instead you get militarised police.
What the public perceives as a danger is more important than what flashy thing sells.
In all fairness, the unusual sells a lot better than the usual as news, so it makes sense that newsmedia goes for the former rather than the latter - any newspaper that reports based on prevalence and ignores the shock-effect of an event simply doesn't get read and goes bankrupt.
So in this specifically, as I see it the problem isn't that the newsmedia choses to report the unusual but that very few people have been taught to beware of one's natural falacy of confusing exposure (how much something is talked about) with actual impact - you can very visibly see it in how people react to governments implementing authoritarian anti-Terrorism measures, were the people who confuse exposure with impact actually support very authoritarian measures to supposedly combat Terrorism whilst the people who do not and instead actual check what's the impact of it tend to be against authoritarian measures because they trade a lot of everybody's Freedom for supposedly combating something which in most countries is has a lower death rate than slipping on a bathtub.
As I see it, were the press fails to uphold Journalistic Integrity is in refraining from reporting on certain unusuals, for example political corruption and certain actions of the ultra-wealthy (whilst choosing to report on other actions of them - see: celebrity culture).
IMHO the dynamic we see in this graphic which is really about impactful vs newsworth is pretty natural, what's not natural is the selectivity in reporting of different but equally newsworthy events.