The Media’s ‘Bad News’ Bias
February 25, 2008 by Eric Eggertson
Filed under Marketing
The media is obsessed with bad news. Given the chance, they will take the worst possible angle on a story and play it up.
Just ignore the average sports story, the average business story, the average lifestyles story and the average local story.
And don’t pay attention to the coverage of official events, announcements, and anniversaries. Those don’t count.
Everything else is negative, negative, negative.
Except the profiles of politicians. And the stories about companies reaching milestones. And coverage of trends in society, personal finance tips, finances and investing.
Everything else is negative.
Why do car crashes and suicide bombings get big play, but scientific and medical discoveries only receive front page coverage in newspapers and 2-3 minute features on the TV news?
More evidence of a disturbing fixation by the media on the worst case scenario.
Need more convincing? Clip the negative stories from your local paper. But don’t clip anything that has healthy heart recipes on the other side. You’ll need those. And watch that you don’t clip stories and photos of local volunteers. Someone you know might be mentioned in them. Best not to clip anything from the Lifestyles section, or the community news, either.
Once you’ve reviewed the ridiculous bias of the media to emphasize all the bad things that are happening, we’re sure you’ll agree that something must be done about the situation.
Oh, and can you record the news tonight? There’s a story about alternative energy sources that I want to watch. It’s on right after highlights of the fundraiser for cancer research…
(Depraved dog-fighting photo courtesy of the Westminster Kennel Club.)
It’s laziness, Eric. Pure laziness.
What most consider to be “bad news” is the instant and unforeseen. Good things happen all the time, but they happen slowly, and media weasels are too damned lazy to track things that happen slow.
When I was reporting, there were plenty of good stories I pitched that were of “no apparent interest,” for no other reason than there was no “today angle.”
“Well, just because *you* hadn’t known about it until now doesn’t mean it will have no impact on the audience.”
They told me I was leaving for “the dark side,” but I haven’t regretted leaving for a single day.
Just goes to show that whatever you focus on intensifies. You want to find the bad in things? You’ll find it. Want to find the good – it’s there too – in arguably equal measure.
Nice dose of irony to get my brain going, Eric. Thanks! :)
I found an exception to this otherwise accurate take on modern media, in the Leader-Post of all places. It had a story about a girl’s birthday party raising money for Telemiracle as an annual tradition, and a fun thing to do. Unless that counts a a society trend…
Eric,
The media understands fear, uncertainty and doubt sells.
I’ve had discussions about this with friends and one of them introduced me to Ode Magazine, http://ww.odemagazine.com.
Ode focuses on positive stories that making a difference. Check it out.
BTW, I’ve got no affiliation to Ode, my affiliation is being disgusted with the bad news media.