There was coverage of the lawsuit filed against FB & Co. They got the bad press. Then once the lawsuit was ruled in their favor, there was no coverage. Whereas, if they lost, you bet there would be coverage.
Yes, misleading bullshit stories get more clicks, but selling misleading things is unethical, even if it does get more sales. You can't blame the public for buying something if they are being mislead about it.
But most of the time the media is not misleading. They are just reporting. They take the information they get and the repeat it. Most journalists wouldn't have the time nor energy to do anything but repeat the first layer of facts as they perceive it.
"But most of the time the media is not misleading"
This I disagree with, almost every story I have had in-depth knowledge of has been very misleading. This is partially laziness, but mostly due to wanting to present a coherent and engaging narrative.
No, I agree with you. As I said downthread, it's not a vast conspiracy, it's just incentives at work. But it's still a big problem that people should be aware of and care about and try to fix.
It is the news media's fault. They have complete control over what they decide to publish (or not), and how. The media chooses to post misleading information for clicks/money. "But someone will pay for it" is never an excuse to do something wrong.
While the media has control, the media is not omniscient or equipped with the capacity to handle all and every story. As somebody married to a journalist I can tell you that the whole primary news business of a country with 90m inhabitants such as Germany is processed by less than 5000 journalists. If you consider that the primary way that news media receive their news is via news agencies which have maybe 1000 employees in Germany then it becomes a strange argument that it would be the media's fault to cover some random litigation.
The media isn't choosing most things in the sense that online news media don't have a plotting war room where they decide what gets published and what doesn't, but rather they observe the news feeds of the agencies and their competitors and pick from this what gets printed in their own page.
Even if you are right that a news site leadership will equip different departments with staff and prescribe length etc, it is much less a guided process.
Not publishing on Oculus/Luckey/Zenimax isn't in any moral ballpark anyway.
There was coverage of the lawsuit filed against FB & Co. They got the bad press. Then once the lawsuit was ruled in their favor, there was no coverage. Whereas, if they lost, you bet there would be coverage.