Can news media be trusted to inform us accurately?
John says since 2009 that the news favors simple, dramatic stories, so complicated conflicts and slow good news go unreported, and in 2019 calls headlines true but distorted. Hank says news media is easy to fool (2009) and biased toward interesting, abnormal stories, yet in 2017 and 2024 he defends journalists, whose ethics and reputation give needed checks.
Axis: trustworthy ... distorting / untrustworthy
Concept: sensationalism
Positions by date: 34 records in 34 videos. The position did not change in these records.
John
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2009-01-11 | first on record | John says wars without clear good and bad sides, like most current African wars, get little news coverage because they don't make an easy story. | SOMALI PIRATES! France Penetrates Chad! 00:00:32 |
| 2012-07-17 | restate | John says TV wants simple, sensational stories, but the truth resists simplicity; he'll stick with YouTube. | Hitler and Sex! 00:03:23 |
| 2014-04-22 | restate | John speculates that complicated stories like the CAR's go unheard and ignored because we want clear heroes and villains. | Understanding the Central African Republic 00:00:24 |
| 2016-08-16 | restate | John says bad news gets heard a lot because it is sudden and dramatic, while good news usually happens slowly and never makes headlines. | Some Good News: 16 Ways 2016 Is Not a Total Dumpster Fire 00:00:09 |
| 2017-02-14 | restate | 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. | Human Life Is Getting Better. Faster Than Ever Before. 00:04:13 |
| 2018-01-09 | restate | John says reliable news is hard to find online and the news cycle moves too fast to follow complicated stories over time. | Your Attention 00:00:33 |
| 2018-05-22 | restate | TV news, political radio and podcasts say 'we don't yet know all the facts, but' and follow it with speculation or implication. | The Liger Delusion 00:03:06 |
| 2019-01-22 | restate | John says this is not quite untrustworthiness or misinformation: the headlines are true but distorted, a truth that grabs attention, which is never quite the truth. | Maureen Johnson and Lauren Myracle's Let It Snow 00:02:30 |
| 2019-11-19 | restate | John says this applies to much larger news stories too, and not only on Reddit: all over the place, headlines misrepresented the truth. | Kylie Jenner Shows Me What's Wrong with Reddit 00:03:35 |
| 2025-10-01 | restate | John says for some reason this is not news: he has not seen it reported anywhere, though he pays attention to tuberculosis news. | Real Reasons for Hope 00:02:26 |
Hank
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2009-10-22 | first on record | Hank says news media isn't hard to fool and never has been; hoaxes are nothing new. | The Top 10 Greatest Hoaxes of All Time 00:00:00 |
| 2015-09-18 | restate | Hank says Americans hear only about the scariest Muslims on the news and that TV figures professionally cultivate outrage and fear because it is good for ratings. | Muslims Aren't Dangerous 00:02:14 |
| 2015-10-09 | restate | Hank explains sensationalist Florida Man headlines as a product of open police records, Florida's size and journalism's economic difficulties, not of Floridians. | The Surprising Truth About FLORIDA MAN! 00:02:31 |
| 2015-10-23 | restate | Hank says researching such topics means reading two angry positions and working out which parts of the anger are real, most of it being just anger. | Benghazi: Explained 00:09:00 |
| 2017-01-13 | restate | 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. | Top 10 Best Dogs Ever 00:03:24 |
| 2017-04-28 | restate | 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. | Can You Trust Mainstream Media? 00:02:15 |
| 2018-11-30 | restate | Hank says how captivating an idea is should not affect how scientists weigh it, but it does shape how we perceive it: headlines, videos and what we click. | We just had our first interstellar visitor...and it's weird. 00:07:04 |
| 2018-12-04 | restate | Hank thinks the hopelessness has several causes, the first being that news will focus on bad news, which the channel has discussed plenty. | When it All Seems Like Too Much 00:00:40 |
| 2019-03-08 | restate | Hank argues audiences who know little about a thing want no nuance about its success, only stories of it being threatening, scary or dangerous, doubly so when it is big and important. | Does "The Press" Hate YouTube? 00:01:40 |
| 2019-03-15 | restate | Hank worries that people want the opposite of editorial structures: individuals they trust because they share their values and are charismatic; trusting a source on charisma rather than rigor is bad. | Why We Stopped Making Explainers: EXPLAINED 00:02:44 |
| 2019-04-12 | restate | Hank says the greatest bias in media is not political but toward interesting, tellable stories, because that is the audience's biggest bias. | Escalators: We're Not Doing it Wrong (Mostly) 00:02:18 |
| 2019-06-21 | restate | Hank thinks there isn't much difference between giving people information that makes them think an untrue thing and telling them an untrue thing. | How to Lie While Telling the Truth 00:02:56 |
| 2019-08-23 | restate | Hank says the headline should not be that large swaths of the Amazon are burning but that they are being burned. | The Amazon isn't "Burning" - It's Being Burned 00:01:27 |
| 2019-09-06 | restate | Hank says newsworthy and important are not synonymous: the Golden Gate Bridge not falling down is important but not news, because the first condition of newsworthiness is being abnormal. | Trump is Abnormal, It's His Superpower 00:00:51 |
| 2019-12-27 | restate | The description says the world has moved back on global faith in democracy, a hit from the social internet, rising inequality, and pundits, operatives and TV news wanting people freaked out. | Why I'm Worried about 2020 video description |
| 2021-06-04 | restate | 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. | Is Twitter Redeemable? 00:02:58 |
| 2021-10-01 | restate | 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. | A Lie I Heard this Week 00:01:42 |
| 2022-06-17 | restate | 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. | Are You Eating a Credit Card Every Week? 00:02:26 |
| 2024-08-07 | restate | 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. | Dear Hank and John Livestream! 00:20:48 |
| 2024-11-08 | restate | 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. | These Maps are Lying (if you let them) 00:00:47 |
| 2024-11-22 | restate | 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. | Populism, Media Revolutions, and Our Terrible Moment 00:20:12 |
| 2024-12-20 | restate | 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. | Fine, I'll Talk About the Drones… 00:04:22 |
| 2025-07-04 | restate | Hank says the cable news ecosystem and the algorithmic news ecosystem both benefit when we believe this fallacy, and nobody else does. | This Graph Changed My Life 00:05:02 |
| 2026-05-22 | restate | 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. | Why I Made Crash Course a Non-Profit 00:01:27 |
Background
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2009-12-30 | background | In the song Hank says cable news chased dumb stories in 2009 (celebrity scandals, Palin, swine flu hype, Balloon Boy) while important events went underplayed. (playful) | The STUPIDEST NEWS STORIES of 2009 (a song) 00:01:09 |
| 2021-07-30 | background | 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) | Can You Trust Science Too Much? 00:02:33 |
| 2025-06-13 | background | Hank says everyone knows one burning car gets vastly more media coverage than many peaceful protests. (playful) | Moving to Hope from Hopelessness (3 ways) 00:00:29 |