[threeseed]

> I read a story in a newspaper or hear one on television that isn't some form of salacious gossip or eye catching spectacle.

I am not American and can't comment on all of the stations but I know PBS has neither of those. Likewise similar public broadcasters do tend to be more serious and moderate in their reporting: BBC (UK), Deutsche Welle (Germany), ABC/SBS (Australia) etc

Unfortunately in a competitive media landscape you need viewers. And humans are just wired to respond to gossip and spectacles.

[ta909123]

> And humans are just wired to respond to gossip and spectacles.

A lot of the more worrying things happen as a result of our evolutionary background I think. We evolved to trust one another ("Was there really a lion over there, Bob?"), and that trust can easily be manipulated if you leave your ethics/morals at the door.

I think there should be laws/regulations against anything that manipulates people based on our evolutionary "upbringing".

[log_base_login]

Thanks for making my point for me.

Every one of your statements is in some way a defense of the current mass media structure. Even your counterexamples of public news sources maintain a sufficiently small enough market share as would be counted as noise in a t-test.