Excellent Notebook post, in excellent English. Here's what it made me think. The simplest way of looking at what motivates the media is not to focus on good/bad news, but on what sells, and makes them money. What sells might be good news, might be bad, and it might change over time. If we want the media to focus not on sales but on making the world a more pleasant and efficient place to live, then we could try one of two ideas. The first idea is what you mention above: regulate the media. If you do that then a) people might not get what they want from the media and b) the media might have to be subsidized for lost sales. This is similar to making drugs (and alcohol) illegal. It doesn't change what people *want*, it just tries to stop them from getting it (and we can see how successful or otherwise doing that is). The second idea is to encourage people to want different things. People do tend to want things that are exciting and stimulating. That applies to the media and entertainment just as it does to drugs and alcohol and other things. But if we work together and encourage the people around us to follow healthy and fun pursuits instead of harmful ones, and to be interested in information and self-improvement instead of sensationalism, then perhaps we can change what people want, and the media will simply shift to meet that demand. This second idea is arguably better, because each of us can do something about it right now. We don't need to wait for any government to pass regulation laws.