It all depends on who is doing the "informing" I suppose. The large amount of news consumption comes via cable news, i.e. FOX News, MSNBC, CNN etc. All of which have the same goal -profit. This comes via viewers which comes via sensationalism. I know you're a smart guy and realize this but the majority of news-goers don't. There is also the question of what is and what is not "news." For example, when Whitney Houston died I heard an announcement of it on NPR. Same thing with Michael Jackson. That was all I allowed of those topics to consume of my time. But had I been a consumer of most popular news media it would have taken up far more of it. By and large, most news sources are extremely negative and focus on the atrocities of the day. -No thanks. I just did a "google news" search and there was one of 5 articles that appealed to me: http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-bio... The rest wasn't "news" it was either pop-culture or not terribly interesting.