Thread by @davetroy

1/A few quick thoughts on how news gets made and reality gets manufactured in 2021. People have the idea that when important information is found, you give it to reporters, and if it's true, they do a story, and everyone is brought closer to truth... well slow down, turbo,

2/it's not so simple. With for-profit outlets, particularly TV, if a story is potentially important, they will do a cost benefit analysis of pursuing the story, and weigh it against a similar analysis of all possible stories.

3/Stories with a high benefit:cost ratio will win out most often. Other stories where there may be litigation (even/especially if it is true) have higher costs, so there is more caution. Those costs may be offset if the story is a home run: mediagenic protagonist,

4/clear newsworthiness, universal appeal, can attract eyeballs, unassailable facts. If those standards can't all be met, costs and risks have to be countered with arguments about raw news value, which may be subjective. As a result of these dynamics,

5/many factual, newsworthy but costly to defend stories will, on average, not get told, in favor of ones that are less newsworthy, more compelling but easier to defend and create few/no enemies.

So how can we cure this?

6/Nonprofit news outlets are one possibility. But maybe more important, establish nationwide punitive anti-SLAPP standards that make such "strategic lawsuits against public participation" much more costly. This would make many outlets more eager to pursue challenging stories.

7/So when you think "the facts are obvious, why does the media do nothing?" this is the process that's going on in their heads. They are weighing rewards (yay, eyeballs!) against risks (nooo, lawsuits) and deciding what's worth the trouble. Truth often gets lost in the shuffle.