All The Fear That’s Fit To Print: How The Media Distort Our Perception Of Danger

“We don’t like bad news, but we need it. We need to know about it in case it’s coming our way.” — The Bad News by Margaret Atwood

Our brains are hardwired in such a way that we are naturally more receptive to negative news than positive news. According to Yuval Noah Harari, the author of the book Sapiens, we are “full of fears and anxieties over our position, which makes us doubly cruel and dangerous.”

Negative news is dramatic (natural disasters, wars, and stockmarket crashes), its sudden, and its spectacular. Positive events on the other hand (longer life expectancy, higher standard of living and cures for diseases) tend to be more gradual, unnoticed and dull.

The media focuses on the extraordinary, rather than the humdrum and the mundane. The charge against the media of course is that misrepresenting the risk of something bad happening means more newspapers are sold, more viewers and more advertising revenue. In short fear sells. It gets more retweets and more shares too. We’re also to blame.

The issue is also on the supply side too. Journalists are under greater pressure to write more and more stories. Lack of time and resources means that they are less able to go to the source, to verify facts and to provide the proper context…