I think there has been a collective wish in the media to give people something to feel good about. And (now Sir) Tom Moore captured the Zeitgeist.
I think there has been a collective wish in the media to give people something to feel good about. And (now Sir) Tom Moore captured the Zeitgeist.
Indeed.Originally Posted by Llani Boy
But collective collusion to put people with feet of clay on pedestals is nothing new with the media always happy to milk the opportunity to sell more newspapers, gain ratings etc. and turn a cynical blind eye to normal human
frailty.
People believe what they wish to believe and the media know that.
Cui bono?
Last edited by Graham Breeze; 03-02-2021 at 11:58 AM.
"...as dry as the Atacama desert".
I'm just fatigued at almost every news channel having 80% of its content Covid related. Week after week, month after month. Ok, I understand it's a pressing national issue but I think we all understand that quite well already. I almost feel wistful for the days when the news was dominated for months by Brexit issues.
Working for years as a Psychologist, one of the issues we had from a therapeutic challenge involved people we worked with engaging in 'perseveration' - the repetition of a particular response, often trapped in a negative cycle of thoughts, affecting their emotional wellbeing and ability to get on with their lives, and cope with the day-today issues we all confront.
While the media harp on endlessly about mental health issues in the general population, they conversely readily feed those unhelpful thoughts by issuing 24/7 streams of negative images and worrisome discussion/debate, with a primary focus in threats and bad news. The twin towers, 9/11, as it's now called, was a classic, with endless hours of images on all TV channels of planes crashing into the Twin Towers. An ideal way of sowing the seeds of anxiety and despair!
I sometimes wonder if this journalist practice is just shoddy journalism, where they can't be arsed to seek out a different set of stories. Hey Ho!
Am Yisrael Chai
I pretty much agree with everything you say there Mossdog.
I also think its the result of having a 24hr constant news feed, on tv, radio and online. They have to fill it with something.
Look at Sky Sports and the football transfer deadline day... they had a digital countdown from 4 days out... does anybody actually care.
The Daily Telegraph has a plethora of highly paid female writers who have filled their boots over the last year giving advice on how to cope with the stress of Covid: avoiding putting on weight, drinking too much alcohol, coping without foreign holidays, etc.
Now I don't feel stressed (beyond the obvious wish for my family and myself to avoid the virus) but I do sense if I read the acres of newsprint then I might well be!
"...as dry as the Atacama desert".
Interesting stuff on news and negativity. Just always been the way, hasn't it? And it's exacerbated now by the proliferation of news outlets and their need to pump out endless content. Is there evidence that there's a greater public interest in 'bad' news or it just an old way of thinking about news? Also, it's scary how satirical stuff like The Day Today and Brass Eye pretty much predicted where we are now.
Geoff Clarke
On of the 'classic' thinking bias in psychology is called the 'negativity bias". Put simply it claims 'Bad is stronger than good".
This BBC article (!) claims it's the reason why 'bad' news is supposedly more attractive.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2...l-the-news-bad
But actually, like most things in life, it's never really that simple (https://link.springer.com/article/10...164-018-0382-7).
Whatever, news outlets have to take some responsibly for what they're pumping out. I find my local newspaper (The Teesdale Mercury) and local TV and radio news tend to have a more positive range of stories that attract me to them. You know the thing. Give me 'cat rescued from tree', 'Fred completes his mammuth model of HMS Victory solely made out of matchsticks' and 'Pat the Postie retires from his round after 100 years' - any day
Am Yisrael Chai
Much of the news industry is powered by advertising revenue nowadays.
I have a close relative who is a good level specialist journalist within the local industry, and part of a huge nationwide overall group... he freely admits that headlines will be written to drive clicks to their website.
It doesn't take much imagination to see that anything controversial, dramatic and fortelling of doom is going to get gullible people to click more... regardless of how much of a non-event the story actually may be.
It'd be interesting to see what the trends across different online news outlets are for 'good' and 'bad' news. Now so much content is driven by clicks it must, to some extent, determine what stories they run. BBC always shows it's most read stories and right now it's a bit of a mix in the top 10. A clap for Captain Tom is currently number 2, but I'm guessing it'll go to number 1 soon. So is the BBC bigging him up or is the public hungry to hear more?
Geoff Clarke
His picture was on the front page of every newspaper today, some with him behind a "walker". The "walker" he used for his big effort is an expensive, carbon-fibre model (my mother has the same one) and I assume his fame hasn't done any harm for its sales!
"...as dry as the Atacama desert".
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