What stories do the media ignore?

[Dayuhan]

Americans have a most peculiar relationship with their media. Among politically active Americans, particularly those leaning left or right, it's often taken for granted that the media serve some agenda opposite from their own, which explains why their pet stories aren't covered. Conservatives speak of "the liberal media", liberals speak of "the corporate media".

What people forget is that media are first and foremost business, and like every other business the bottom line is the bottom line. The point is not to advance an agenda, the point is to make money, and that means pushing the stories that bring in the viewers. That's particularly true of television, where the merciless dictatorship of the ratings decides where the advertising money flows and which executives keep their jobs.

So a quick answer to "what news stories do media ignore" would be "anything that they think will not grab and keep the attention of their outlet's target audience".

[Fuchs]

So a quick answer to "what news stories do media ignore" would be "anything that they think will not grab and keep the attention of their outlet's target audience".

...and more.
"The media" is a large bunch of actual people, and these people have biases.
The powerful amongst these people (the ones who choose the stories) are usually the better-paid ones. The celebrities amongst them are often millionaires.
Millionaires tend to have a millionaire point of view, so the U.S. media's distribution of attention between the topics of poor people's problems and the top marginal income tax rate should not surprise.


The media is "too left" if you sit far right and it's "too right" if you sit far left. It's mostly relative. Nevertheless, some of its biases are well-researched and founded in human nature. And those go well beyond revenue maximization.