>how related is the incidence of fires in Ruussia with those in Brazil? I don't know, lets combine them anyway!
If the "hype" the author is crusading against is the idea that the Amazon fire is killing the planet's lungs and will result in an apocalypse or whatever, then isn't it fair to look at incidence of forest fires all over the world?
The author is definitely being a contrarian and the headline is clickbait, but a lot of people in this thread are railing against the author saying nobody should care about the Amazon fire and that it's not a big deal, when really he's just arguing that the media is sensationalizing aspects of the ordeal to sell papers/subscriptions/views. You can care about/report on the story without going nuts on headlines saying the world is ending.
> a lot of people in this thread are railing against the author saying nobody should care about the Amazon fire and that it's not a big deal
Any newspiece that can have a political angle, regardless of the textual content and the author's intentions, will have its potential political angle explored by other agents. Case in point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20789081
So it must be read between the lines, even though that can muddy the technical/factual debate.
A more sophisticated reading of such a piece must take into account how people will perceive it, and what actions may come from it.
Especially in the US (which may not be an exception — I just follow it more closely) a lot of news organizations seem to operate with a "news you can use" viewpoint: these are the facts, here's how to act in face of these facts.
Readers are primed to change their minds after being presented with a set of facts. It's akin to overwriting data that should have been appended to existing data[0].
[0]: I'm dealing with data recovery, so this metaphor may be topical to me, but not entirely useful.
If the "hype" the author is crusading against is the idea that the Amazon fire is killing the planet's lungs and will result in an apocalypse or whatever, then isn't it fair to look at incidence of forest fires all over the world?
The author is definitely being a contrarian and the headline is clickbait, but a lot of people in this thread are railing against the author saying nobody should care about the Amazon fire and that it's not a big deal, when really he's just arguing that the media is sensationalizing aspects of the ordeal to sell papers/subscriptions/views. You can care about/report on the story without going nuts on headlines saying the world is ending.