Comment by panick21_
3 years ago
No its not news most of the time. The situation you are referencing is an extreme case and that's why it made news, and it happens to be a very well known story with the evidence being literally in the capital city. Seems like you are suffering from an extreme case of survivor bias.
It seems whenever I have in-depth knowledge of something, and see a journalist's reporting on it, it's all wrong.
For example, I was in a building once when a natural gas leak caused the roof to blow off. I recorded 3 local news casts about it later that evening. They all got major facts completely wrong. They said it was a warehouse (it was an office building). They said the building was cleared before it blew (I was in it when it blew, the firemen never suggested I leave).
Another one is the 737MAX crashes. The popular press consistently misrepresents and misreports it. (I've posted about that here many times.)
And, quite obviously, the mainstream media in the US has been completely misrepresenting current events. Do you think that's a modern phenomenon? I don't. I suspect it has always been happening, it's just that the internet has exposed it.
"What people outside do not appreciate is that a newspaper is like a soufflé, prepared in a hurry for immediate consumption. This of course is why whenever you read a newspaper account of some event of which you have personal knowledge it is nearly always inadequate or inaccurate. Journalists are as aware as anyone of this defect; it is simply that if the information is to reach as many readers as possible, something less than perfection has often to be accepted." —David E. H. Jones, in New Scientist, Vol. 26
Relevant in this context inasmuch as many Wikipedia articles are based on press sources.