I think I’m more intrigued by topics that are suspiciously absent from BOTH sources.
E.g. it is surprisingly difficult to find any TV news coverage of the wild macroeconomic trends going on with China’s banking and real-estate sector at the moment.
Also: Epstein trial follow-ups; Ghislaine Maxwell living it up after a guilty verdict. Remember when Bill Gates and many other leaders/ politicians were found to have a _paper trail_ of their involvement with Epstein??
IIRC, the unfortunately-named IRA won't kick in for four years, only helps people on Medicaid, and makes drug prices worse for other programs. It was clearly written in a way to help big pharma and not the little people. And that ought to piss off any CNN or Fox viewer.
Instead, they show versions of the story to trigger their bases.
I don't think people give a care about China at this point because things are so bad at home. There's really no obvious way that this affects Americans, so why bother talking about it? Plus, the crisis in China has been going on for so long at this point that it's turned into olds.
Same with the other stuff you mentioned: there's nothing really new or interesting with that.
> There's really no obvious way that this affects Americans, so why bother talking about it?
Looking at cnn.com right now, I see stuff like:
> Finnish PM says videos of her 'boisterous' partying shouldn't have been made public
> Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s 2016 plane incident: FBI report reveals new details
I know nothing about the Chinese real estate market, but somehow I feel confident that it will affect more Americans than these two stories combined will.
> Plus, the crisis in China has been going on for so long at this point that it's turned into olds.
So has the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, yet it still makes big news.
The point is more that Fox will routinely elevate issues that aren't really "news" in a traditional sense to major "stories", either to fill time[1] or to make a partisan argument.
The IRS funding is a great example here. The IRA bill indeed increases funding for the Internal Revenue Service by something like 30%. This would be reasonable content to include in a print article, say, of the kind of bureaucratic funding decision that happens thousands of times every year. But Fox went almost wall-to-wall on it, with partisan guest after partisan guest claiming absurd things about "87000 armed agents coming after your money". That's not news. It's just not.
Edit to add: and CNN, really, just doesn't do that. If there's a breaking story that's embarassing to democrats, they run it. They're journalists, it's what they're trained to do. Surely the jouranlists and editors have opinions and perspectives about what's important, but it doesn't rise to the level of "newsworthiness" decisions. They cover what breaks, for the most part.
[1] i.e. "Avoid covering other stuff". That ridiculous Elvis story they were running was, essentially, counterprogramming the revelations about the FBI raid for which there was still no consensus republican response. They couldn't put a talking head on the screen to "explain" it, so they ran some irrelevant nonsense instead of covering breaking news.
Increasing funding for enforcement for the IRS is something that I personally feel is a good thing, but I think it’s fair to cover it in light of the fact that it seems to be colored by politics, like so much else. Why on earth would the Democrats pronounce that it won’t be used to audit anywhere earning less than $400k? As an extension of the anti-rich rhetoric, it’s no longer a simple “bureaucratic funding decision” and should be covered/discussed. (Not that I fully agree with the tone or manner of coverage, but you can’t claim that it’s not news.)
I keep bouncing around on how to respond to this. But really you have this exactly backwards: you think we should pay more attention to a subject (i.e. dedicate our limited "news" bandwidth to understanding it) because political actors want us to think it's important.
And, no, I think that's exactly backwards. The fact that one side is predicting tax armageddon and the other is explaining that it only soaks the rich is an easy cue that this is not a subject with any real truth to it, because if there were then there would be simple answers and not spin. And there is a simple answer, and it's that "The IRS got a moderate funding bump in this bill". And that simple answer is all I need.
And it's all you should need too. The only people who want more coverage of the subject are the ones trying to change your mind about it (or reinforce your priors). And those are the people you should be listening to the least.
Nothing in my comment prescribes who or what you should pay attention to.
First you’re bothered by what networks are covering. Then I explain why these topics may be interesting. So then you say I’m backwards because I shouldn’t pay attention to what they are covering. Good grief: why are you bothering to complain about what they’re covering in the first place? Isn’t your first comment backwards for the exact same reason?
Fox watchers would say something like "it's just a witchhunt, and it found nothing" or "climate change is a big fat nothingburger". (I personally don't believe that!)
2. I think the notion of "X didn't cover something" is heavily biased, maybe not in this case where they're looking at data, but I have a very news-angry friend who sends me stuff like that all the time like 15 minutes after I read about it on the NYTimes. Maybe it's not on the front page, maybe it's not "what people are talking about" but it's often there, but people want other people not just to cover it but for it to have an impact and for people to be mad about it. Lab leak is a great example I think of something everyone is made that "never got covered" but of course it got covered. At different times, to different degrees, with different angles and emphasis, but just search google for "lab leak NYTimes" and it's there all over the place. Is it as in-depth as people want it to be? Probably not, and that's where you get into conspiracy realm, because there's no actual data to follow as to why, just speculation.
E.g. it is surprisingly difficult to find any TV news coverage of the wild macroeconomic trends going on with China’s banking and real-estate sector at the moment.
Also: Epstein trial follow-ups; Ghislaine Maxwell living it up after a guilty verdict. Remember when Bill Gates and many other leaders/ politicians were found to have a _paper trail_ of their involvement with Epstein??