It’s like a rash that won’t go away. An extremely minor rash on a non-embarassing part of my body, but a rash nontheless. Maybe in a place I can’t properly reach. It’s not oozing or painful, but it’s there and it irritates occassionally and I can do nothing about it except complain.
Here it is: why does “the news” far more often than not mean “the bad news”?
I understand it. I, like everyone else self-aware enough not to be in denial, will admit to participating in the horrible rubbernecking phenomenon that takes place when passing by the scene of some terrible accident, fire or other awful event. It is a deficit of our species.
The media, thus, being cogs in the engine of consumerism, feed us what we want to see and hear: fire, war, crime, death, destruction. Most of it — a vast majority of it, in fact — has absolutely no impact on my life. Sure, I like to be informed of world events, but honestly, fires in Kuwait, explosions in Russia and kidnappings in Columbia have no effect on my daily life. Knowing about them, on the other hand, cannot be good for my health.
Being constantly bombarded with bad news wilts the soul and weighs heavily on the spirit. In short, it sucks. I’d like to see some blue sky and sunshine, too (metaphorically speaking).
Whew. All that leads to my point: “the news” CAN mean “good news.”
You just need to know where to look.
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6 comments
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Grant Hamilton says:
18 August 2009 at 10:33 am (UTC -5)
As a sometime teacher of journalism, I will endeavour to enlighten you! First of all, one of the factors that determines “news” is how unusual a given event is. Luckily, we live in a pretty civil society, so crimes and other ‘bad news’ events are considered unusual. However, you will also note that most newspapers cover things like festivals and celebrations regularly.
Another thing that is newsworthy is conflict, because conflict is interesting. Conflict is also at the heart of most literature, so you can’t really blame the media for focusing on it. Conflict and change drive a lot of the news, but it’s not always really negative or positive. It’s usually something as dull as a city hall bylaw debate, for example.
In fact, I’d argue that the popular conception of newspapers (or all media) only focusing on bad news is erroneous. I just picked up the closest newspaper to me, happens to be the Brandon Sun from yesterday — Monday. By far, most of the stories in that paper were what I would term “good.”
Front page headlines were 3/4 good. Page 2 was all good. Page 3 was 2/3 good. (and the single bad story on the front page and the third page was actually the same story — and it was a story about poor weather forcing events to cancel — and it ends on an uplifting note — so its not exactly death and destruction).
Pages 4 and 5 saw some more complex news. Although some of the stories were about things like swine flu and the medical isotope crisis, the angle each story took was positive (“Mountie on the mend after bomb attack” “Struggling hog farmer hopes fed cash will help” for example). There were some very short “briefs” that were unambiguously negative, but there were also some positive ones.
After that, we get into opinion, which was tilted a little more critically, but still not doom and gloom. And in the rest of the section, we had 99% happy news, since it was arts and entertainment and youth.
The other section of the paper was sports, and I’m not going to go through that one, since it’s certain to be mostly positive for one team, negative for the other.
In short (ha!) I get kind of defensive when people accuse “the media” of being too negative. I think people don’t give “the media” enough credit for the positive news they do cover. There’s plenty out there, but no one remembers when they read it.
That said, I like the site you linked to, and I’m going to bookmark it.
Matt Goerzen says:
18 August 2009 at 10:47 am (UTC -5)
I have to agree with Grant on this one, but I would also add one last thought. If you really wanted only good news, most of the time all you have to do is read small town newspapers, many of which rarely publish anything remotely smacking of “bad news,” beyond maybe writing up an RCMP report. Usually they’re filled with festival coverage, cheque presentations, and the latest verbatim news releases by local politicians wanting to show how much they’ve done for you recently. There are always exceptions of course, but you don’t want to make your town or its people look bad, right? Heaven forbid.
Juel says:
18 August 2009 at 11:17 am (UTC -5)
Nice link, I bookmarked as well. The baby elephant video made me giggle.
T. Keith Edmunds says:
18 August 2009 at 11:27 am (UTC -5)
Hang on. I didn’t say I ONLY wanted good news. That’s not realistic. What I don’t like is CNN (for example), giving me round-the-clock coverage of a “minor” hurricane (again, for example).
Yes, I understand such an event would have a major impact on a lot of people and that I am not the center of the universe and CNN has a geographically wide viewership. The issue I take is the constant hammering of bad, bad, bad. Worry, worry, worry. “We’re all gonna die, so go buy something.”
Grant, I take your point on the “unusualness” of an issue. In theory, it’s great. Unfortunately, when a celebrity dies, that goes out the window. Sure, it is a sad thing when someone dies, but does a singer or actor or person famous simply for being famous passes call for nonstop coverage? Is it really that unusual? Yes, they’ll only die once so it is unique, the end point on the curve of unsual. That argument is not going to fly with this cowboy.
Despite your railing against my stand, I still think that bad news remains at the forefront.
As journalists, Grant and Matt, of course you are going to be biased on this topic, so you’re forgiven your defensiveness.
Noto says:
18 August 2009 at 12:39 pm (UTC -5)
“If it bleeds, it leads”
Matt Goerzen says:
18 August 2009 at 7:19 pm (UTC -5)
Keith, while I sympathize — please remember Grant and I have to read and edit the stories that go into our respective publications, whether we want to or not — news is news, good or bad. It’s “new” by definition. Perhaps once people learn to behave and act decently to each other, countries and their militia incinerate their weaponry Simpson’s style and scientists manage to tame earth’s wild weather, then we can have more good news than bad. Bit of a pipe dream really. Reminds me of an X-File episode from years back where Mulder wishes for World Peace and every other person on the planet disappears. But I digress.
I can only add one final thought, and that is this… if you don’t like what’s on CNN, either change the channel, or turn it off. Read a book, pet the cat, eat a peach and attempt to write bad poetry. But just because Michael Jackson dies (as an example), doesn’t mean you’ve got to watch all the gory details. Unfortunately the headline “Barack Obama still living” or “Mick Jagger not dead yet” just don’t make much sense.
But don’t forget to read your friendly, neighbourhood daily newspaper.