Mastodawn

Flipboard News Desk Jun 22, 2023

The Titanic submersible story appears to have ended in tragedy after several days of intense news stories. How would you rate the media's coverage of this event?

Appropriate: It was an unusual, dramatic story

15%

Overkill: More important stories to cover

82.7%

Not enough: I couldn't stop watching the updates

0.6%

Something else: Tell us in the comments

1.7%

Poll ended at Jun 23, 2023 at 8:55pm.

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ilinamorato Jun 23, 2023

@NewsDesk there's this weird sense in media discussion that news is zero-sum: that reporting on one thing necessarily means not reporting on another thing.

Which is of course technically true, but it's also functionally nonsense: most news outlets put out far more stories than gain traction on social media.

The problem, as it is with so many things, is the algorithm: users responding, reacting, resharing the most lurid and macabre coverage means that those are the only stories people see.

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ilinamorato

@NewsDesk I just don't think we can absolve ourselves of responsibility here and heap all the blame on the reporters. When we get rid of the gatekeepers, we become the gatekeepers. In this world, we are also the media. We decided what stories performed, and we chose this one, for good or ill. If we want to make another decision next time, it's going to require a concerted effort from all of us.