A great episode as ever. I have just been re-listening to it on a long train journey, somewhat ironically.
The increasing prevalence of emotional and fear-based journalism definitely feels to me like a consequence of the scramble to increase the number of readers/viewers in a world where traditional journalism has less reach.
I tend to find that, by listening to the news on the radio, primarily the BBC World Service in my case, rather than reading it online, the chance of being drawn into reading more on a story is greatly reduced.
Also, by sticking to a couple of well known mainstream sources as a main source of news, over time I have come to understand how they will react to different situations, and can therefore make a better judgement on what is actually going on. I made a foray into reading alternative media sources a couple of years ago, but, while I am sure most of the writers are very well intentioned, I found it much harder to understand what was actually going on due to not fully knowing their pre-standing biases. That is partly why I enjoy The Private Citizen so much, because you always start off by stating your position, giving us the ability to properly interpret what you are saying rather than just shoving it down our throats as indisputable fact.