Why can’t the news media be more of a force for good?

Journalists, like aid workers and members of the emergency services, can witness awful events. It’s part of the working life they signed up for. Correspondents might be confronted with starving babies in famine areas or children wounded by air strikes, while domestic news reporters can encounter passengers hurt in train crashes or grieving relatives of victims of gang violence.
But while the 999 worker or NGO staffer instinctively steps in to help, the news professional is trained to merel