Why the news is never good news
I’ve stopped watching the news.
That’s right, I haven’t watched the news for at least a week. At first it was hard – especially at breakfast, when the staple television program was the Today Show’, Good Morning America’ or, in the case of my father, Bloomberg Business News’. It was hard not to be caught up on all the madness around the nation, much less the world.
When you begin to look at the television programs that have showcased themselves as news broadcasts’, one seems to find that they look less and less like informational presentations and more like entertainment shows for the masses. With local news becoming available at least 9-10 hours a day, and 24-hour-news channels cropping up all over cable and satellite networks, the media looks to be saturating the market and the masses with non-stop transmission of information.
Can you say information overload’?
However important it may be, the facts and figures we get 24 hours a day, seven days a week are not as important as what is going on in our own lives. Yet for most of us, going without watching the news is like going without television – why watch if you’re not wanting to stay current on the issues of the day?
Of course, the news wouldn’t be so divisive if it weren’t transmitting what some call depressive reports and stories. Some even go so far as to say that the media has some sort of bias that turns the bulk of the reporters to pessimistic beats.
However, the reason why the news is never good is not about a reporter’s bias, or about the tone of the news broad casted throughout the air. The problem lies not only in ourselves, but in our elected officials, network CEOs, and prominent celebrities, artists and entrepreneurs.
Think for a second; what is the news, anyway? When you realize just what the news is, and who does (and doesn’t) run it, you begin to understand the critical underpinnings that shape and mold the news features showing today. Without viewers, the news would not exist – and neither would their advertisements. In order to pull a large audience, the news of today has to adapt to the changing marketplace of cable and satellite TV – intense graphics, forceful background music and multiple visualizations on-screen are all part of a concentrated campaign to attract more younger, diverse viewers.
Of course, all one has to do is recall the saying of old when it comes to news broadcasts –
“If it bleeds, it leads.”
This is truer among larger national news networks, of whom small, pointless idyllic stories that balance out the grim, horrendous headliners just don’t seem to make the cut when it comes to prime-time. Only on a slow news day do we hear what some people would call “good news” from these channels.
Let’s also look at the society we live in. If the world were full of good news and good events, that’s probably what would be covered. Bad news is cheap, easy, and attracts more attention among our society than good news.
Until we find a way around this, the news will ultimately be “Murphy’s Law”; whatever it is, it’s sure to be bad.