How is informing people of crimes committed by agents of the state against innocent civilians "entertainment?"

You're clearly getting swayed by the emotive nature of this specific episode.

Are you saying you were not aware of police brutality before? Can you say that knowing about this specific episode is as useful to you as reading documentation or learning how to garden?

You'll have to forgive me if this sounds too utilitarian, but unless you're directly involved in this incident or policy making that affects future instances, then for all intents and purposes, there's no informational value in transmitting this story to you since you're not going to do anything about it anyways. In that sense, it is just vapid consumption, hence entertainment.

To be clear, I'm not criticizing the news reporter. They're doing what they believe is a service to others, and I respect that. What I'm talking about is how you as an entity with limited attention span could alternatively think about news.

> unless you're directly involved in this incident or policy making that affects future instances, then for all intents and purposes, there's no informational value in transmitting this story to you since you're not going to do anything about it anyways.

Frankly, that's nonsensical. There is a national conversation happening in the United States about policing, police brutality, and the lack of consequences when police abuse their authority. Engaged citizens should be informed enough to participate in that conversation.

I've always known there was police brutality, but seeing and reading as much about police as I have over the last several years has certainly changed my views, which impacts which candidates I would support in an election, for example.

I admit my view is somewhat cynical, but I feel compelled to ask: what has this "national conversation" achieved? Can you draw direct relationships between a choice between two actual candidates and how your change of vote affected anything related to police training? I ask this not to hear about hypotheticals or idealisms, but because the one instance of actual widespread law enforcement brutality that I have familiarity with (Brazil's military dictatorship years) only came to an end because of special circumstances surrounding specific political connections at the time, not because of any direct participation of the populace (in fact as part of the transition back to democracy, there was even a "compromise" amnesty law that shielded perpetrators of torture from charges).

I've read on numerous occasions how the US flavor of democracy is similarly not actually all that representative of the opinion of the masses (honestly, I have a hard time believing in any claim that the same political environment that passed Texas' recent abortion laws is a high functioning democracy).

I maintain my utilitarian position that reading about something in the news and talking about hypothetical candidates on some tech forum is nowhere near the same level of civic engagement as actually getting involved directly.

To be clear, there's nothing wrong with reading news and not engaging in civics as a reaction, but the comment that prompted this discussion was about the relationship between reacting to news and the bigger picture for each person individually, and I think that identifying when time is being wasted is a pretty good start towards redirecting energy to activities that one considers important. </two-cents>

The United States is a democracy. Laypeople are expressly given the direct power to influence policy changes through voting, organizing, and protest. News like this is absolutely essential to informing the populace about what is happening where they live and what values and systems they want to support or oppose.

As I mentioned, I'm not criticizing the news reporters, I do respect what they do. This thread originated to talk about individual reactions to news. If you read aboud injustices and go out on the streets and protest and that actually makes a difference, more power to you. Though realistically speaking, I'm not sure movements like BLM are making much of a difference, unfortunately (I would love to be proven wrong here though!)

For anyone else who was confused like me, the "three sieves test" is "before you tell a story or pass on a rumour, ask yourself whether it is true, kind or necessary".

I'd heard this before, but never called that.

Yes. The one nuance in this case is to evaluate these factors as the receiving party, to determine how relevant the content is to you personally. E.g. for the police chief of that department, knowledge of this incident is very much necessary. For the random internet perso who's going to forget about it tomorrow, perhaps not so much.