All the News that's Fit to Click
Why online media makes us more angry yet less informed.
Since 1897, the slogan "All the News That's Fit to Print" has sat atop The New York Times masthead. It made perfect sense in an era when news was physically constrained by the limits of print media. Each day, the number of stories was determined by what could fit within the pages of a newspaper. Editors had to make deliberate choices about what information was most important, what deserved attention, and what would serve their readers.
But those limits have been obliterated in the digital age. With the internet’s boundless capacity and the constant access provided by our devices, the news cycle has become effectively infinite. We can access news anytime, anywhere, and consume it in endless streams. The boundaries that once confined what we considered "newsworthy" have dissolved.
On the surface, this seems like a positive development. With complete access to the world's information, we could, in theory, pick and choose the stories most relevant to our lives, ignoring everything else.
The problem lies not in the access, but in our relationship with information. Humans are wired to seek novelty, a trait that once served us well when information was scarce. But in today’s landscape of infinite news, this compulsion to constantly seek new stimuli leaves us in a state of perpetual consumption - like running on a treadmill that never stops. Our appetite for news is endless, yet the more we consume, the further behind we feel.
Attention Economy
With the news now transferred from the scarcity of print to the abundance of the screen, a new problem arises: how do you stand out when there’s limitless content available? This is where the attention economy comes into play.
In a world of infinite content, the most valuable currency is our attention. And with media outlets vying for this limited resource, sensationalism and clickbait have become the tools of survival.
At the heart of this race for attention lies the ad-revenue model - a voracious engine that powers the entire system. The more clicks and engagement, the more revenue flows into the coffers of platforms and media outlets alike. Every headline and every image is a carefully crafted lure, designed to hook a wandering gaze in the marketplace of distraction.
In this brutal contest for attention, content must seduce, provoke, and demand to be seen. And so, the news we consume is dressed up in sensationalism, wrapped in clickbait, and emblazoned with imagery designed to ignite a reaction - because in this world, the primary goal is not to inform or to provide value, but simply to capture attention.
Yet it’s not just the creation of content that’s shaped by the attention economy - it's the very platforms we use to discover it. Social media algorithms are engineered to amplify content that drives the highest engagement, because these platforms, too, depend on ad revenue. The longer people spend engaging, the more ads they see, and the more revenue is generated.
Skimming the Surface
In this environment, our natural craving for information leads us down a path of rapid consumption, sacrificing the depth and nuance needed to truly understand the news. In our race to keep up with the relentless flow of stories, we skim through information, leaving ourselves with a fragmented understanding of events, often distracted by irrelevant details.
This problem is exacerbated by our ever-shortening attention spans. The feeling of boredom or restlessness sets in more quickly when we attempt to engage deeply with a single story, often causing us to abandon it prematurely in favour of something new. As a result, our focus is continuously pulled elsewhere, preventing the sustained attention needed for meaningful comprehension.
To accommodate the demands of the attention economy and our increasingly short attention spans, much of the news we consume is condensed into bite-sized, easily digestible formats that strip away nuance and context, leading to a surface-level understanding of complex issues. In an environment where attention is critical but fleeting, there is little room to explore the full depth and complexity of the real world.
Binary Narratives
Clickbait media satisfies our primitive desire to see the world clearly through the lens of good vs evil. It plays to our tribal instincts, reducing the complexity of societal issues into clear-cut oppositions. This binary way of thinking is not new, but the internet and social media have dramatically intensified it, shaping how we engage with news and current events.
Humans are naturally drawn to simplified narratives, especially when faced with complex problems. Our brains prefer clear distinctions - heroes and villains, winners and losers, oppressors and victims - because it simplifies an increasingly complicated world. This framing taps into our cognitive biases and emotional responses, giving us not only someone to root for but, more importantly, someone to blame.
In the digital age, media outlets are incentivized to frame stories in simple, binary terms. When attention is fleeting and shallow, the complexity and nuance required to understand real-world issues often get sacrificed. The media can't afford to provide the depth that complex stories deserve when they must compete in an attention economy driven by quick, reactive engagement.
This approach reduces debates to binary choices, reinforcing tribal thinking where audiences align themselves with one camp and reject opposing perspectives. Social media algorithms amplify this effect by creating echo chambers, environments where users are primarily exposed to content that reinforces their pre-existing views. In these spaces, binary narratives thrive, making it harder for people to encounter diverse perspectives or engage in nuanced discussions.
Chasing Engagement
In the attention economy, clicks are currency. To capture them, the media increasingly relies on sensationalist tactics designed to provoke strong emotional reactions. These emotions, such as fear and outrage, trigger a more intense response from the brain, creating a sense of urgency that prompts us to engage immediately - often before our rational mind has had a chance to intervene.
Numerous studies have demonstrated that content with highly emotive language and provocative headlines tends to outperform both neutral and positive language. For example, a study published in Nature Human Behaviour found that for an average-length headline, each additional negative word increased the click-through rate by 2.3%, while each positive word reduced it by 1%. These figures may seem small, but in such a highly competitive digital landscape, even slight boosts in click-through rates can drive some outlets to push the boundaries of sensationalism to grab and hold attention.
This trend is reflected in another study that highlights the growing negativity of headlines over the previous two decades. Since 2000, the tone of media reporting has become increasingly negative, with the research showing that, by 2019, the proportion of anger-inducing headlines had more than doubled, while fear-based headlines saw a 150% increase. Meanwhile, “the prevalence of neutral emotion has experienced a continued decrease (-30%) since 2000”.
The Social Arena
What’s even more rewarding for this type of content is the potential for social media virality. Emotionally charged stories are far more likely to be shared, commented on and amplified across platforms. Understanding this, social media algorithms prioritise and boost the visibility of such content, ensuring it reaches a wider audience and maximises engagement.
In this way, the use of hyperbolic headlines and exaggerated language benefits both the publishers and the platforms: publishers see a spike in engagement and ad revenue from the increased interaction with the content, while platforms gain from users spending more time on-site due to sharing and discussion, further boosting their own ad revenue.
It’s no surprise that, since his takeover of Twitter/X/X, formerly Twitter, Elon Musk has relentlessly engaged with the most attention-grabbing and divisive stories from across the world, often bizarrely inserting himself into the centre of these controversies. As the most followed account on the platform with over 200 million followers, Musk’s interaction with these stories amplifies their reach, becoming a powerful engagement driver. One might question whether he genuinely believes anything that he says, or if he’s simply fueling the machine. When it’s engagement that drives revenue, the truth is of secondary importance.
Newsroom Myopia
Beyond the divisiveness and sensationalism forced upon us by the landscape of infinite news, we find ourselves consumed by the constant churn of daily headlines, losing sight of the deeper forces shaping society. While each headline commands our attention as though it’s the most urgent issue, they often distract us from the long-term challenges that deserve focus but rarely receive it.
Reflecting on stories that dominated the news cycle just a few months ago - how many of them continue to have any meaningful impact today? How many have faded into the abyss, either due to irrelevance or the inaccuracy of their predictions? Despite the urgency with which they were reported at the time, how many can you even recall?
We bounce from one headline to the next, each amplified by the media’s microscopic lens. But today's headlines will meet the same fate as those from recent months - quickly forgotten, discarded and replaced by the next wave of sensationalism, destined to vanish as swiftly as they appeared.
Even for major events that continue to dominate headlines - such as the wars in Ukraine or the Middle East - how much closer are we to understanding why they are happening? Despite the overwhelming flood of daily coverage, many people remain stuck with only a surface-level grasp of these conflicts, formed from the fragmented information they’ve absorbed online.
Lost within the clamour of the moment-to-moment coverage is an explanation for why such events are happening. The constant deluge of breaking news tends to sideline the necessary context that might help us truly understand the broader forces at play. We become so focused on the immediate details - the what and the how - that we rarely pause to consider the why.
Why More Engaged = Less Informed
It is a common mistake among humans to assume that any given problem, idea or conflict is only as complex as our understanding of it. Our digital media landscape, as I’ve laid out here, fuels this naivety through its reliance on binary narratives and a culture of headlines that prioritise clicks over accuracy.
In our rush to keep up with all the news presented to us in the digital age, we not only sacrifice the time and space needed to actually digest it, but we also propel ourselves into a sensationalist world where every headline is crafted to seize our attention. The more news we consume in this landscape, the more we find ourselves experiencing heightened fear, anger, and division.
Of course, not all sources are created equal. The polarising attention economy has given rise to some extreme, fringe outlets that push the worst of this content. But while we can make more conscious choices to engage with reputable, prestigious publications, no outlet is immune. Even within these trusted sources, the pressures of the digital world force them to comply with the laws of the attention economy.
Between 2010 and 2019, The New York Times - home to the famous "All the News That’s Fit to Print" slogan - saw a significant increase in the prevalence of prejudice-related terms, with words like “racist” and “sexist” spiking by 638% and 403%, respectively. Similar trends can be observed across other well-regarded publications.
Moreover, in the arena of social media, curating the news you encounter is often beyond your control. Even if you carefully select who to follow, algorithms designed to maximise engagement will inevitably flood your feed with hyperbolic irrelevancies.
In his book Factfulness, the Swedish academic Hans Rosling writes: “It’s not the media’s role to present the world as it really is. They will always have to compete to engage our attention with exciting stories and dramatic narratives. It is upon us consumers to realise that news is not very useful for understanding the world.” This points to a crucial disconnect between the stories we consume online and the reality we experience in our everyday lives.
Studies have shown that less than 5% of people experience moral outrage on a daily basis in their offline lives. In contrast, the digital environment bombards us with outrage-inducing stories at every turn. This disparity reveals just how manufactured our emotional responses can be when mediated through the news cycle. Online, where anger and outrage are disproportionately amplified, we’re led to believe that the world is in a constant state of crisis. But when we step away from the screen, we realise that such intense emotions are not part of our everyday reality.
This contrast highlights the importance of grounding ourselves in real-world experiences. Most of our daily interactions and experiences don’t mirror the extreme emotions we encounter online. Instead of being swept up by the relentless churn of sensationalist headlines, we should cultivate scepticism toward the media’s portrayal of events.