In 2020, along with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a dramatic spike in murders in the United States. This increase in lethal violence, understandably, was covered extensively in national and local media outlets. Yet, much of this coverage lacked critical context. While the increase in murders was significant, the overall murder rate remained far below its peak in the 1980s and 90s.
The alternative is well funded public news. News is click bait today because they ride or die on advertisement. If the news didn’t need to care about readership at all, then they could work on providing informative but perhaps boring content. We’ll never get that while never ending profits are the goal.