How news manipulates hearts

A recent news story tells of a lunch room cashier who allowed a student to take extra food items for free when he claimed not to have money to pay for them.

The natural empathic response is to sense injustice: "Children need food! Starving people who can't pay is cruel! Firing an employee for defying these evils and giving away free food is more proof of an oppressive system that terrorizes people into submission to capitalist evils!"

But then subsequent news stories fill in gaps that change our perception: It turns out the cashier could have put the items on the student's bill for him to pay later. It also turns out the items were cookies and fries, i.e. extra carbs beyond the allotted menu of nutritious items. Then, the student's mother even chimes in a says that she is not depriving the child of food at home.

So now we can conclude that the child just wanted extra treats and that the lunch room cashier was giving them to him without billing him because . . . ? Does she empathize with the desire for more cookies and fries? Does she feel the food is overpriced? Is she just trying to be popular with the kid(s)?

Whatever the case, it begs the question of how the media manipulates our hearts and minds as readers based on what information is given and left out; and whose responsibility it is to question and critically assess the information as such.

Do we have the right to expect media producers to provide sufficient information to avoid presumptive assessment on the part of readers, both intellectual and emotional?

Or should we accept all journalism, no matter how manipulative, as free speech and expect readers to sort out what to think and believe?

Finally, what about when people such as Trump, who is in the position of president, criticize the media? Is that his free speech and/or duty to rightly warn the public about media abuses? And if the media in turn ridicules him and generates negative public opinion against him for doing his duty to warn and inform the public of their abuse of free speech, is it also within their liberties to crush him with public opinion in order to replace him with someone more friendly to their abusive interests?

These are very hard questions. We seem to have reached a danger zone where freedom and democracy afford sufficient power to their enemies that such enemies might succeed in undermining and/or overthrowing them. If they succeed, what then?