Quote:
Originally Posted by Strangelet
The fact that its so easy to pander to people doesn't make it excusable.
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i wholeheartedly agree, and i feel like i tread this line at work all the time. i could get bazoodles of traffic to my content by using misleading lines like "a cure for cancer?" because i know people would click. there's a necessary conscience that some outlets try to maintain and others don't.
your comment actually reminds me of something that is a big hot-button issue for me, which is that victims deserve to be victimized if they're too stupid to avoid it. like take someone who's been bilked out of thousands of dollars by nigerian scammers. there's a tendency to say, well if they were stupid enough to fall for it they deserve to get scammed. and i hate that logic. because no matter how stupid or greedy someone is, the scammer is NEVER RIGHT.
so i agree with you, that just because it's easy to pander to people, that doesn't make it excusable. just because humans as a species tend to fixate on the next most plausible source of armegeddon, that doesn't mean those who stand to profit from that impulse should do so.
i'm not defending media. i'm just saying i don't want the baby thrown out with the bathwater. there was justifiable intensity to the initial coverage of this new virus, and it still merits monitoring. yes some outlets went way too far because we're in a slow news cycle otherwise. but that doesn't make all coverage silly, or the whole situation overblown.