People are strange

Why is it that people are inherently designed in such a way that they derive a certain pleasure when another human being is suffering? Yes, I know for the most part, we feel bad and we try to be sympathetic when something negative is happening to someone else. But there is that little bit within one that is somehow happy. Is it perhaps because we are naturally competing against one another (if one is to subscribe to Darwinism) and feel that we have automatically won if someone else has lost? 

In a study I watched recently on the National Geographic, it was highlighted that small children will actually help out even a stranger in need, if they are capable of helping. This is to say that people are not, after all, inherently selfish and tend to be a species that actually cares about one another. Why, then, this pleasure in someone else's failure? It must be the result of present-day society, and all of the current trends (and let's blame MTV while we're at it). 

Why do we always want to catch a glimpse of a car accident, or watch the report (and continuous coverage) of morbid news? Why this obsession? If it's simply for compassion's sake, does one not have enough troubles in his own life to feel sorry for himself? Why follow so vigilantly the tragedies of others? And why is it constantly thrust in our faces? Perhaps people should start killing off (or at least stigmatizing) this kind of attitude, rather than feeding it. As of today, there's no sense in watching the evening news.