[bklaasen]

TV news is curated for a particular effect; Why this story, and not that one?

It is a type of commercial entertainment. It it simultaneously inane and culturally violent. Here are people dying in an ongoing struggle for power between warlords and a corrupt government; here are professional athletes winning a tournament. Here's the weather forecast. These subjects merit approximately equal time and similar sentiment in tone. As a viewer of TV news, you are not empowered to change anything because you are not informed of any of the forces and complexities driving the violence and there is no call to action.