In a free market, editorial decisions are made based on advertising revenue.

That’s not always a good thing. Simply because something is factually true and increases audience engagement doesn’t mean it’s relevant or responsible to include.

For example, COVID had a fatality rate of 2%. That’s a fact. It also will increase engagement amount certain media markets.

But that’s also very misleading. 2% of the world is 140 million people.

The fact that it’s piece of “true data” that increases audience engagement doesn’t mean it belongs in mainstream articles.

Isn’t that 2% of CFR (particularly also hospitalizations), not IFR? Still many people (and thus is the reason that historically regions of the US, dating back to George Washington, mandated some vaccines), just not the whole world.

Oh, I'm not saying it's a good thing. I just don't see what you can do about it within a capitalist framework without some kind of centralized censorship - which is even worse in the long run.

I don’t think misleading data increases user engagement that much. And editors usually do a pretty good job not naming victims of sexual assault, reporting in suicides, etc.

Most editors want to maintain high standards, and that means excluding irrelevant data.