this is referred to as the “Broken Glass” phenomenon, I don’t know who coined the phrase, I first read about it in a Malcolm Gladwell book. Basically, an abandoned house can stand there for years, all windows intact — then all of a sudden, one window will be broken out (think vandalism), within a very short amount of time, not only with all the glass be broken, but there will be other damage as well.

Basically, it boils down to this: if something is “allowed” to remain in condition (i.e. broken glass), the next person believes it’s OK to break the next pain of glass.

Covering bad news, talking about it, referring to it — the glass is broken, we tell people about that broken glass in an effort to “expose” the broken glass, but unless we also “fix” the broken glass, we may be just telling people that breaking glass is ok (that is an unintended consequence of writing about it).