The title, "If it bleeds," points to the old newsroom saying that violent stories get the front page ("if it bleeds, it leads"), and the poem's first lines keep that cynical tone. The news "makes madness to order," as if panic and outrage were products manufactured on demand. The second line, "nobody was to be offended," sounds like a tired comment on a culture so careful about hurt feelings that it misses what matters.
The third line widens out: we are "perpetually fighting battles," whether real wars or the constant arguments the news feeds us. Then the poem turns. "How strange that you should be dead" is quiet and personal, and it lands hard after the noise before it. The speaker seems stunned, almost puzzled, as if one actual death doesn't fit into a world of manufactured drama.
The mood is weary and uneasy, then suddenly tender. The poem suggests that grief is the one thing the news can't package.