A growing body of evidence portrays the tendency that humans have to prioritise bad news over positive news content. But, why is this? Every day, the news headlines are filled with reports about inequality, terrorism, war, crime and pollution. Nobody would read a headline: “40,000 Commuters Successfully Made it to work on Time.” On the other hand: “Plane Crashes Killing 100 people” is a story that would be reported. Not only because it’s sensational, but because studies suggest that humans may be physiologically predisposed towards focusing on negative content because the potential costs of negative content far outweigh the potential benefits of positive content. This is in terms of how the outcome of negative content intrigues people far more than that of the outcomes of positive content. Even if the world really isn’t going into a worse state, the tone of news persuades us to think that it is. News is current things that occur, not about unusual things that don’t occur often. You never see a reporter saying to a camera: “I’m broadcasting live from a country where a plane hasn’t gone missing or a city that hasn’t been destroyed.” Would you not change the channel if we did? There will constantly be enough negative circumstances to satisfy the standard of news, but not any positive content that will stand out enough to oppose this natural tendency to focus on negative content rather than positive.
News agencies seek audiences, experience and sales, which points towards the value of negative content. When participants say that they want more positive news, they still select online news stories that are predominantly negative, which shows that our news consumption habits still prioritise content that is negative. For instance, a recent study shows the relationship between the tone on magazine covers and sales; negative tones on magazine covers it shows sales of around 7700, whereas the sales of positive tones on magazines covers have much lower. This study makes very clear the implications that ‘negativity bias has in humans.
In December 2014, the Russian news site City Reporter only reported good news to its readers for an entire day, in order to investigate the reaction to this experiment. The site brought positive news stories to its headlines, for instance ‘No Disruption on the Roads Despite the Snow.” The result was a buffet of sunshine, lollipops and rainbows that absolutely no one wanted to read. The city reporter lost two-thirds of its normal readers on that day. However, this experiment clearly shows our attraction to negative content may be even more persuasive than we thought. Negative events are more enduring and intensely impacting than positive events. This suggests that human nature has deteriorated so much that we would rather hear the ‘bad news’ first instead of the ‘good news’.
The proliferation of negative news are unsurprisingly negative themselves. Heavy news-watchers can become misled to believe things that are catastrophic yet in truth, nothing short of unrealistic, for instance, “77% of Americans believed that “Islamic militants operating in Syria and Iraq pose a serious threat to the existence or survival of the United States.” People who read or view negative content, not surprisingly become tedious. They become bleak and start saying things such as, “Why should I vote?” Its not gonna help or “I could donate money, but there’s just gonna be another kid who’s starving next week.” Some people may argue that media companies skew negative content because the bad news is the important news, and spreading it can affect positive change. For example, reporting on natural disasters can prompt action in environmental issues; writing about decades of discrimination, corrupt government officials and ineffective social policy can – maybe -hopefully – bring out cumulative positive change. On the other hand, not every news organisation is basing its news decisions on benevolence, and too much bad news can leave people feeling desperate and callous, therefore having the opposite effect.
The news has undoubtedly become increasingly negative over time. The New York Times Newspaper has steadily become glum from the early 60s to the early 70s, then brightened up a bit in the 80s and 90s (but just a little), and then further declined to a poorer state in the next decade. This also suggests further deterioration of human nature, though do we force journalists to write in such a negative tone due to our prioritisation to this type of content?
A current article by Arianna Huffington argues for the importance and demand of positive news. Huffington draws in part on recent work suggesting that positive content suggests, provides evidence that the “if it bleeds, it leads” approach to gaining audiences is misguided. She argues that News Readers want more positive content. However, sharing news content on social media is a fundamentally different process from selecting and reading articles. Even as we may tend to forward positive content via social media, our news-reading habits may still prioritise negative information. Social media could be a possible antidote of negative news, but is it strong enough?
Research in the future might also consider the implications that social media have on the tone of the news content that we readers or viewers receive. If we increasingly receive news content through social media, and if social media users tend to forward positive content rather than negative content, then we might expect the emphasis of our news content to become more positive overall. Whether this leads to a more abreast and aware constituency is another matter. Perhaps journalists are drawn to reporting bad news because immediate disaster is more constricting than slow advances. Or it could be that the news collectors believe that contemptuous reports of corrupt politicians or unfortunate events make for simpler headlines and stories? Another possibility is that we, the readers and viewers, have trained journalists to focus on these certain things. We have trained them so that they will prioritise problems in society rather than solutions only for the fact that it may sell better which portrays human nature as one which has deteriorated quite significantly, Many people often say that they would prefer good news; but is that actually true?