Matt Taibbi: Today's false-balance news stories exist because the public has encouraged that approach to journalism, and other bad approaches.

When people do things that cause harm, the first obvious idea is to call it "human error". They are clearly making bad choices. But we can look more deeply and ask, did the system encourage these errors?

When lots of people make a foolish choice, there is generally a systemic explanation. People don't choose clickbait because they like to be disappointed by the story they finally see. Rather the functioning of journalism is a system, and the system has a flaw that leads to results we find flawed.

People don't prefer clickbait because they like to be disappointed by the story they finally see. And news sites don't deliver clickbait, or horse-race journalism, because that's what readers people sincerely and deeply want. Rather, they are operating in a system which leads publishers and readers to go down that path.

Can we find a way to change the system of publication so that it gives different results?

Perhaps surveillance-based advertising is part of why the system works this way. We need to get rid of that anyway, for privacy's sake. Would that have the byproduct of encouraging better journalism?