Anyone who is puzzled by the behaviour of major news media can achieve a better understanding if they get this simple proposal: media isn’t interested in helping us or informing us – their goal is to alarm us or downright scare us.

And news media doesn’t particularly care whether the material they’re presenting is accurate or fair or reasonable – as long as they can induce us to click on something, they’re happy to do it, at any cost.

 The truth is optional and duty of care is nowhere to be seen.

All forms of news media have chosen this path – publications which previously had pretensions to being quality media, like the Sydney Morning Herald or The Australian, these days have a cheap-and-nasty sensationalist tabloid mentality in news presentation.