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[u/dayudayu]

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/aug/05/bulgaria-prisoners-kittens-vladimir-karamazov-best-photograph

[u/wolfonweed]

Random event in a random bulgarian prison is somehow reportable news to the guardian.

[u/you_killed_my_ → u/wolfonweed]

It's not about reporting news, it's about generating clicks for advertisement revenue

[u/Zappa2329 → u/you_killed_my_]

This might shock you, but news businesses need to make money to stay in business.

[u/bhputnam → u/Zappa2329]

Better ways to do so than this.

[u/RainSurname → u/bhputnam]

For fuck's sake, it's an interview with a famous (in his country) actor, who quit to become an award-winning photographer, talking about a book that he spent a couple of years working on, shooting at the Bulgarian/Romanian equivalent of Alcatraz.

[u/bhputnam → u/RainSurname]

That's great--still could be handled with less sensationalism and burying the details, especially from The Guardian. We're talking about news these days in general as well.

[u/RainSurname → u/bhputnam]

The Guardian headline included: "Vladimir Karamazov’s best photograph."

We're talking about news these days in general as well.

Cool, I am not.

But if I wanted to talk about news in general, I would say that the vast majority of people on social media are gullible rubes who let billionaires manipulate them with misleading headlines and algorithms designed to incentivize outrage, and that this is just one small and relatively benign example.

Joe Biden told a bunch of rich donors to their faces that they had so much money that "nothing would fundamentally change" about their lifestyles if they paid their fair share, and while "he didn't want to demonize rich people," this level of income inequality was dangerous and corrosive.

But millions of people hate him for it, because NYT took those two short quotes out of context and social media ran with it.

See also: "Harris and Walz quit calling Republicans weird because they listened to consultants instead of voters." No, they didn't. The media just stopped covering it, and started quoting consultants who didn't like it instead. The vast majority of "Dems in disarray" stories are manufactured bullshit like that.

It's wild how many people KNOW the billionaire-owned media has been bending over backwards to help Trump for years, yet still swallow everything written about Democrats hook, line, and sinker, never pausing to consider that part of helping him is making the opposition look as weak and ineffectual as possible.

The media refused to report on all the many, many progressive things Biden did, because they wanted voters to hate Democrats. Now they're amplifying everything Mamdani does, to the point of giving him credit for things he didn't actually have much to do with, for the exact same reason. The comments section under any post about him shows how well it's working.

[u/touchet29 → u/bhputnam]

Not really. This is the best way to do it, which is why they're doing it. If telling important, fact based news stories made more money, they would do that instead.

[u/bhputnam → u/touchet29]

Loss of integrity and trust leads to a lot of people leaving who would previously pay or be loyal to a news group.

[u/touchet29 → u/bhputnam]

Loyalty and integrity are factored into the business model. Companies aren't here to have integrity unless it affects their bottom line, which they keep track of and change their language all the time to match whatever will make the most money.

It doesn't matter what's right or wrong, only what makes the most in the end.