The Integrated Theory of Journalism, Villains and Intention Bias

John Althouse Cohen complains about mainstream journalists' coverage of Supreme Court decisions:

the media will report the latest Supreme Court decision as if the case affected only the parties in that case. In reality, those parties are relatively insignificant; the broader legal principles are more important. The media seems to think that the latter are too abstract, hypothetical, or academic to be worth reporting.

Andy McKenzie observes:

The biggest divergence between narratives and reality, in my view, is the primacy of villains. There is a tendency to blame someone--the greedy investment bankers!, the predatory subprime creditors!, etc.--but almost always these fall apart upon closer analysis.

I earlier submitted the idea that humans exhibit what I call "intention bias":

What I'm thinking of is that persons' judgments of an outcome are coloured by their judgments of people's intentions that led to that outcome. I believe distrust of market solutions has a lot to do with that.

The media who think that broad legal principles - as well as other impersonal, invisible forces - are too abstract are correct. If many people lose their homes, surely there must be bad people to blame? We all know intentions and outcomes are closely coupled, right?

I believe human reasoning exhibits the above weaknesses because human psyches evolved in social environments - namely small groups - in which those cognitive tendencies were no weaknesses, but rather led you to the right answers almost all of the time. Don't blame the journalists - blame the abstract process that is evolution.