Why is the News so Negative?

If the media you consume on a daily basis was food, what would your plate look like?

Whether we’re endlessly reading the latest breaking news, finding the bottom of your Facebook feeds, or flipping through channels, we’re constantly consuming media. So what impact does that have on us, particularly if we constantly consume media that makes us fearful, anxious, or more stressed? Let’s take a look at the impact that negativity is having on us and what a world with a healthier media diet could look like! 

Why is the news so negative?

You’ve probably had this experience–or a rendition of it–recently. You turn on the TV, open your laptop, or scroll through social media, and it appears that the world is constantly in a state of turmoil. As the headlines flash, you might feel a sense of stress, anxiety or overwhelm building from just a few minutes of absorbing the news. Why is this? Why does the news tend to skew towards the negative, and how can we work to stop the impact of this negativity?

As it turns out this doesn’t have to be the status quo. We can have an influence on the news and media we see, and that begins with educating ourselves on where negative news bias comes from.

On the surface, negative news bias seems like a straightforward problem: the news is always so negative. But, look just a little deeper and we start to understand that it’s not just the news that’s perpetuating negative news bias, our own brains and behavior are a part of the problem, too! 

Surveys have found that 95% of Americans say they follow the news regularly. Over half of them (56%) say doing so causes stress. ¹ In addition, studies have shown that watching negative news can increase anxious and sad moods and increase worry in areas unrelated to the negative content we’re consuming. ²

And as the Harvard Psychologist Steven Pinker points out in an insightful piece for the Guardian, “heavy news-watchers can become miscalibrated. They worry more about crime, even when rates are falling…” ³

Let’s break it down.

This problem of negative news bias is two-fold:

1. The way things are determined as “newsworthy”
2. The way our brains process information

How is content deemed “newsworthy”?

Whether you get your news online, through social media, or by watching it on TV, it would seem that crime is rampant, disasters are constantly impending, and the state of the world is worse than ever before. Why does it seem that way when some of our best indicators of human progress are saying  otherwise? 

Yesterday, 137,000 people escaped from extreme poverty. Child labor around the world has been cut in half in just 16 years. Child mortality has fallen by more than half since 1990, violent crime has decreased by 74% in the past 25 years, and life spans have increased by more than six years between 1990 and 2016.

So, where is all this good news? Why do we only seem to see negativity? Well, to put it simply, news is about what’s new, and none of these positive changes happened overnight. They were the result of slow progress. 

Things that are newsworthy, are attention-grabbing and emotion-inducing, new. A violent crime, the impact of a horrible natural disaster, the latest political drama, these are all newsworthy subjects because they are breaking stories with new information that induce an emotional reaction. They are headlines that will catch our attention as we flip through the channels or scroll through our Facebook feeds.  

How do our brains process all of this negativity?

So, how does that affect us?  In a study that looked at what stories from the New York Times went viral, content that evoked heightened emotions like awe, anger, and anxiety were at the top. ⁴  But our brains handle positive and negative information differently, and negative emotions tend to involve more thinking. ⁵ This means that even though awe makes it to the top of the viral list, we tend to dwell more on those unpleasant events. Add to this another quirk we humans have, and it makes negative news (particularly when there’s a lot of it) keep ringing in our ears.

Our brains estimate how likely it is that something will happen by how easily it comes to mind. Images that are vivid, gory, or violent–very often “newsworthy” topics– will rise to our minds far easier. So, if you’ve been seeing a lot of scary posts about crime or danger, your brain will overestimate how likely it is you will find yourself in a dangerous position. This, of course, leads us to feeling more fearful and anxious, and changing our behavior accordingly. 

With an understanding of how news gets made and how our brains react, we can start to work on correcting the impact of the negative bias taking place.

What can we do to combat negative news bias?

Surprisingly, the answer is not “turn off the news”. We need news to know what’s happening in the world, but too much of it can cause us to spiral into waves of panic and disinformation.

I think it’s easiest to think of the news and media we consume as a diet, even the healthiest meal can become unhealthy if we consume too much of it. As our grandma’s told us, everything in moderation.

Once we’ve understood that, we can move on to what we, yes you and I, can do about changing negative news bias. Once we understand that we are a part of the problem, we can start to see a solution. That solution breaks down into four easy steps–and if you’re a long-term reader here you’ve probably heard these before:

1. Pause: Before you click on that headline that’s riled you up. Every click we make, every second of streaming we do, every outraged comment we type is a vote for what we want to see more of. Content creators, news companies, social media algorithms decide what to create, broadcast, and show more of based on our interactions with content.
   
2. Ignore: Maybe easier said than done, but once we’ve given ourselves a second to pause when we see something we want to react to we give ourselves the space to ignore more. We can ask ourselves, “Do I want to see more of this?”, “Does the world need more of this?” and then decide to just keep scrolling. It’s like starving a fire of oxygen, without fuel, the fire gets smaller, and eventually burns out.
   
3. Seek: Seek out signs of goodness and progress. The vote our attention gives can swing in both directions. If we choose to seek out signs of goodness and progress, we tell content creators to create more of it.
   
4. Share: Share signs of goodness and progress when you find them. Sharing content, sharing stories, sharing what we’ve found helps to not only elevate the voices of positivity and progress that exist out there in the world, but also gives others a perspective on the world they may not have seen. Emotions are contageous. ⁶ So the stories we choose to share have a biggle ripple effect than you may think.

The Power to Change or Perspective

Negative news bias is far from an impossible problem to solve. Like any issue we face, educating ourselves and others, and becoming more aware of our actions, can make a dramatic change!

If you want a few examples that will help you started on your seeking, and give you stories to share, below are a few of my personal favorites.

Stay beautiful & keep laughing!

-Liesl