You aren't disputing whether it's a justification, you're disputing my empirical claim that newspapers leave the Kardashians out of war coverage for principled reasons. But we can just pick some other news topic that is also dry like science yet newspaper feel duty-bound (or shame-avoidance-driven) to not enhance with celebrity gossip. (Otherwise you're claiming that duty/shame play no role whatsoever in news coverage, which I think is clearly false and am not interested in arguing about.)