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All statements about sensationalism

64 statements about sensationalism in 45 videos, by upload date.

Back to sensationalism.

2009

  • 2009-01-11 · SOMALI PIRATES! France Penetrates Chad! — John sarcastically says these African events are front-page news only in an alternate universe where people care more about others' well-being than about American actresses' narcissism. (playful) — 00:00:02
  • 2009-01-11 · SOMALI PIRATES! France Penetrates Chad! — John: Chad's war, like most current African wars, has no clear good and bad side, which is part of why such wars get little news coverage: they are hard to tell as a story. — 00:00:32
  • 2009-03-18 · Lighting Candles for Rwanda — Hank relays that the news she watched mostly showed 'one asshole in one white Suburban' fleeing police, while tens of thousands of killers murdered hundreds of thousands and no one talked about it. — 00:00:00
  • 2009-10-22 · The Top 10 Greatest Hoaxes of All Time — Hank says news media isn't and never has been hard to fool, people like to mess with people, and hoaxes are nothing new. — 00:00:00
  • 2009-12-30 · The STUPIDEST NEWS STORIES of 2009 (a song) — Hank: The song's refrain: many important things happened in 2009 (Iran's election, the recession, Obama's inauguration), yet what cable news covered seemed dumb. (playful) — 00:01:09
  • 2009-12-30 · The STUPIDEST NEWS STORIES of 2009 (a song) — Hank: The song says 2009 was another year where we kept the world alive without paying attention; since the news still reports these stories, its singers just might be alone in their view. (playful, hedged) — 00:02:33

2010

  • 2010-09-17 · Positive Prank Calls!! — Hank hopes the people he called will feel better about the planet and society; he thinks it is easy to get discouraged only because we get told the bad news and never the good. (hedged) — 00:03:05

2011

2012

  • 2012-07-17 · Hitler and Sex! — John argues that essentializing and sensationalizing these stories is designed to make us comfortable, to feel fundamentally different from people who participate in genocide; that is not the truth. — 00:03:09
  • 2012-07-17 · Hitler and Sex! — John says the truth resists simplicity, whether TV executives want to accept it or not. — 00:03:23

2014

  • 2014-04-22 · Understanding the Central African Republic — John speculates that one reason we don't hear about the Central African Republic is that its story is complicated; we like narratives such as Rebels versus Empire or Harry versus Voldemort. (hedged) — 00:00:24
  • 2014-04-22 · Understanding the Central African Republic — John thinks news stories that don't fit a heroes-and-villains narrative are often ignored, because good guys and bad guys are so central to how we understand ourselves and the world. (hedged) — 00:00:45

2015

  • 2015-09-18 · Muslims Aren't Dangerous — Hank: Americans hear about Muslims regularly on the news but only the scariest ones; with only that input you get a messed-up idea, an easy but huge mistake because we know nothing. — 00:01:27
  • 2015-09-18 · Muslims Aren't Dangerous — Hank: Negative ideas are reinforced in people motivated by fear and outrage, who watch TV figures that professionally cultivate outrage and fear because it's good for ratings. — 00:02:08
  • 2015-09-18 · Muslims Aren't Dangerous — Hank: Muslims in America know the hatred and discrimination, Muslims abroad know extreme American views, and Hank bets other countries mostly hear about the scariest Americans. (hedged) — 00:02:37
  • 2015-10-09 · The Surprising Truth About FLORIDA MAN! — Hank says the law, plus Florida being the third most populous state and journalism being in an economically difficult place, yields many sensationalist Florida Man headlines. — 00:02:31
  • 2015-10-23 · Benghazi: Explained — Hank says it's not fun to read two angry positions and work out which parts of the anger are real and which are just anger, which is most of it. — 00:08:53
  • 2015-11-24 · Crime and Outrage — John says several studies show we like to share what outrages us online, which pushes media companies, even small ones making videos in basements, to find outrageous stories. — 00:01:09

2016

2017

  • 2017-01-13 · Top 10 Best Dogs Ever — Hank says the way we're fed news is inefficient, overwhelming and manipulative, and too often people tasked with informing the public try to win rather than inform, which he is sick of. — 00:03:24
  • 2017-02-14 · Human Life Is Getting Better. Faster Than Ever Before. — John recalls Hank telling him bad news happens all at once and good news slowly, making good news hard to notice; we still need it, maybe now more than ever. (hedged) — 00:04:13
  • 2017-03-21 · My Information Diet — John feels that inside the feed he becomes a person he dislikes: skimming instead of engaging, valuing cleverness over compassion, and clicking clickbait, which creates a world with more clickbait. (hedged) — 00:02:04
  • 2017-04-28 · Can You Trust Mainstream Media? — Hank: Answering the title, Hank says actual news (not op-eds) in mainstream media can be trusted far more than almost anything else, and he stands up for an institution we would be screwed without, despite its recent swipes at YouTube. — video description
  • 2017-04-28 · Can You Trust Mainstream Media? — Hank says news media destroyed its own and everyone else's credibility by focusing on cheap, easy content: opinion pieces and shouting matches between people paid to disagree. — 00:00:58
  • 2017-04-28 · Can You Trust Mainstream Media? — Hank says reporting is sometimes bad, but a bad Wall Street Journal piece doesn't make the whole paper or every newspaper garbage: hold journalists accountable, don't throw them out, we need them. — 00:02:15

2018

2019

2020

  • 2020-08-25 · Somebody once told me… — John says the TikTok announces at the outset that it will freak you out, and humans pay more attention to novel, strange or outrageous information, so it starts promisingly. — 00:00:58

2021

  • 2021-06-04 · Is Twitter Redeemable? — Hank: That idea, a good way of showing pure utilitarianism isn't perfect, is interesting, but it is not the idea in the headline or subhead. — 00:02:58
  • 2021-07-30 · Can You Trust Science Too Much? — Hank: Anyone can go on cable news and claim the FDA is holding ivermectin back, free of science's constraints; being wrong on cable news isn't illegal and seems encouraged. (playful) — 00:02:33
  • 2021-10-01 · A Lie I Heard this Week — Hank says this is not the fault of terrible people in the news industry but human nature, probably for good reason: new things are what we understand least. — 00:01:42

2022

  • 2022-06-17 · Are You Eating a Credit Card Every Week? — Hank says legitimate outlets would not simply repeat the New York Post, so they fact-checked, found a peer-reviewed paper with the claim, and with a great headline that was enough for them. — 00:02:26

2024

  • 2024-08-07 · Dear Hank and John Livestream! — Hank says media must make people feel they need it, so news makes the world seem constantly reshaped: if the world were the same as yesterday, you wouldn't need the news. — 00:20:48
  • 2024-11-08 · These Maps are Lying (if you let them) — Hank says a worse graph crime, increasingly common now that being the media has spread to whoever gets the most attention, is that the data is wrong. — 00:00:47
  • 2024-11-22 · Populism, Media Revolutions, and Our Terrible Moment — Hank: In an editing aside Hank adds that trust needs checks: the press has incentives to find abuses and, to protect its reputation, to avoid errors, hence journalism ethics. — 00:20:12
  • 2024-12-20 · Fine, I'll Talk About the Drones… — Hank says the news reported 'reports of car-sized drones'; there is plenty of evidence for the reports but he has found none for car-sized drones, though he had assumed they were real. — 00:04:22

2025

  • 2025-06-13 · Moving to Hope from Hopelessness (3 ways) — Hank says everyone knows one burning car gets vastly more media coverage than many peaceful protests. (playful) — 00:00:29
  • 2025-07-04 · This Graph Changed My Life — Hank says an opposing view reaches you mainly because it is crazy: in-groups expose you to easily refuted out-group ideas, so you mostly see the worst versions of your opposition's ideas. — 00:01:57
  • 2025-07-04 · This Graph Changed My Life — Hank says the cable news ecosystem and the algorithmic news ecosystem both benefit when we believe this fallacy, and nobody else does. — 00:05:02
  • 2025-10-01 · Real Reasons for Hope — John says for some reason this is not news: he has not seen it reported anywhere, though he pays attention to tuberculosis news. — 00:02:26

2026

  • 2026-05-22 · Why I Made Crash Course a Non-Profit — Hank says the reason no one paid attention to the brothers' work had basically nothing to do with its impact: those companies took investment, and they and their investors told stories of the future backed by big dollar figures, which helps people writing stories they want clicked. — 00:01:27