The "NEWS" has only two sources

1. press releases from the government and businesses and non-profit agencies and celebrities and academics who are announcing to the world what they are (or claim to be) doing

2. journalists’ own “investigations”

There are no incentives for either group to minimize the “visibility” of poverty, any more than there were any incentives for missionary groups to tell the congregations back home that “actually the heathen seem quite content to remain unconverted”.

The government gets its money because of “problems”. Businesses want always to seem “charitable”. Non-profit agencies are in the business of “charity” and “problems”; and, as Jason Reitman’s wonderful script puts it, every celebrity needs a “cause”. No explanation is needed for the academics.