Item — HN Reader

While the image itself is interesting, and indeed points out one of the reasons I don’t watch/read the news from mass media, there are two problems I find with the (clickbait) title:

1. “Manipulation” suggests that outlets are leading people to believe these ratios of causes of deaths, when in fact, they’re just reporting on what they think viewers find more interesting (basically unnatural over natural causes of death).

2. The “(social)” feels misplaced. “Social” media, to me, always represents media shared by others, not by news, via sites and apps like TikTok, FB, Instagram, etc. The image only shows news media (though I’m sure this isn’t far from what the distribution also looks like on actual social media).

2 comments

Agreed on 2, this problem predates what we call social media.

I also tend to agree with 1, but that’s the actual problem, and I don’t think it’s fair to call it clickbait. The news media shouldn’t be reporting what they think viewers will find interesting, they should be giving an accurate picture of what is happening. We all know how, for example, YouTube’s and Facebook’s engagement algorithms turn your online world into echo chambers. The traditional media has the same problem when they chase engagement at the expense of the whole truth.

For sure there’s a balancing act necessary. The media of course can’t ignore what people want, but they can choose to be a force for truth and still have a viable business. They can choose not to dramatically overexaggerate things that don’t affect us, and they can choose to sprinkle doses of reality and boring stuff amid the drama.

I think I would feel more manipulated re: this distribution of cause of death if I felt like mass media was intending to send the message that homicide and terrorism had higher rates than heart disease or cancer.

I don’t get the impression this is the message they’re intending to deliver. I believe they report on individual stories of homicide and terrorism because it’s more interesting to the public, thus will gain more viewership.

To be clear, I’m not saying mass media isn’t manipulative — in fact, I think they are responsible for much of the misinformation being shared and believed by so many, particularly when it comes to politics.

But if we’re just talking about statistics on the cause of death, I don’t believe they want us to believe homicide/terrorism causes more deaths than heart disease/cancer.

They might not intend to claim homicide is a bigger danger than heart disease, specifically, but that’s effectively what’s happening anyway.

However, they are claiming homicide and terrorism cause more risk and death than they really do, in part because fear is good for their business, and in part because these two specific causes of death are sometimes political vehicles.

The topics of homicide and terrorism wouldn’t actually be as interesting to the public if the media reported on them accurately, and actively worked to show the true risks to the public, especially in relation to heart disease, cancer, and car accidents. The level of public interest depends on the level of reporting!

It becomes social because inevitably it will be shared. They are the source material.

Agreed, but when the source is mass media, they should be attributed the blame, not social media.

Social media is responsible for spreading much more misleading/manipulative information than even mass media would report on.

That is, if we saw a chart of how social media manipulated the news, it would be way more exaggerated than this.

Not defending mass media — I just believe social media can be 10x more misleading than what this chart would have us believe (whereas mass media is already terrible.)