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Selective Coverage

Nobody lied to you. They just told you a very specific part of the truth.

Selective coverage is when media focuses heavily on certain aspects of a story while systematically ignoring others. A protest gets covered for its violence but not its cause. A policy gets covered for its controversy but not its content. The facts reported are real — it's the facts not reported that distort the picture.

This works because you can only form opinions based on what you know. If you're shown ten stories about crime in one neighborhood and zero about crime in another, you'll draw conclusions that feel data-driven but are actually driven by editorial choices. You weren't lied to. You were given a carefully incomplete picture and left to fill in the gaps.

The pattern is consistent: stories that challenge powerful interests get less coverage, smaller headlines, fewer follow-ups. Stories that serve those interests get prime placement and repetition. Over time, this asymmetry shapes your sense of what's normal, what's important, and what's true — without a single false statement ever being published.

Watch for this: when a story breaks and then vanishes, ask why. When one angle dominates and others are absent, ask who benefits from that absence. The most powerful editorial decision is not what to publish. It's what to leave out.

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