http://www.amazon.co.uk/Flat-Earth-News-Award-winning-Distor...
It makes it very hard to mourn the passing of the newspaper industry.
EDIT: before someone chips in about how the PR industry is so powerful because journos are pressured by the 'net - the rot had already started back in the 80s, and it's because of corporate owners squeezing the numbers. Primarily murdoch.
I guess it's more noticeable to us within tech, because HN generally aggregates a fair amount of content from TechCrunch, and Mashable, and so on, and it's not unusual to see four or five links to these things every day.
A solution is to post and upvote the original source where possible, and hope it attracts more discussion than the churn does.
[0] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Flat-Earth-News-Award-winning-Distor...
But as an addendum to that it's also important to know and accept that, as a result, you are more ignorant. This isn't a bad thing, for as long as you know that you're willingly less informed. As stated, this is the opportunity cost for pursuing things more important to you.
As an aside, I'd like to recommend Flat Earth News[0] to anyone who wants a journalist's insight into how the news isn't always truthful.
As another one, I saw a comment saying Americans are how they are because they don't watch the news. I disagree. Watching the news does not make you culturally sensitive.
[0] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Flat-Earth-News-Award-winning-Distor...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Flat-Earth-News-Award-winning-Distor...