Even without AI, the internet revolution has placed vast amounts of factual material in an almost instantly accessible form to huge swathes of humanity. Researching articles for publication in newspapers and periodicals has ceased to be as painstaking or time-consuming as it once was.

While it is easier to write an article that is fact-checked and accurate than it has ever been in the past, the nature of mainstream media content, coverage and output has changed radically.

Sometimes one has to wonder as to how it is that, for example, the death of a drummer who featured in a band 20 or 30 years ago seems to grab the attention of a wide variety of mainstream media editors at the same time. Particularly when the majority of news consumers would be unlikely to be able to name the dead drummer if asked as a general knowledge question on a TV quizshow. And yet the death of the drummer achieves simultaneous prominence across our newspapers and broadcast media.

Does anyone really care that much? Would the news come as a surprise to readers and viewers? Would many people feel let down if they were not alerted to the drummer’s passing?

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In the age of internet algorithms, distinguishing between the important and the trivial seems to be down to increasingly random characteristics of social discourse.

The media’s absorption with personality could be said to be........

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