"Bad news bias"

[George K]

From the New York Times - "The Press is Biased!"

Alternate title: "If it bleeds, it leads."

Bad News Bias

Bruce Sacerdote, an economics professor at Dartmouth College, noticed something last year about the Covid-19 television coverage that he was watching on CNN and PBS. It almost always seemed negative, regardless of what was he seeing in the data or hearing from scientists he knew.

When Covid cases were rising in the U.S., the news coverage emphasized the increase. When cases were falling, the coverage instead focused on those places where cases were rising. And when vaccine research began showing positive results, the coverage downplayed it, as far as Sacerdote could tell.

But he was not sure whether his perception was correct. To check, he began working with two other researchers, building a database of Covid coverage from every major network, CNN, Fox News, Politico, The New York Times and hundreds of other sources, in the U.S. and overseas. The researchers then analyzed it with a social-science technique that classifies language as positive, neutral or negative.

The results showed that Sacerdote’s instinct had been right — and not just because the pandemic has been mostly a grim story.

The coverage by U.S. publications with a national audience has been much more negative than coverage by any other source that the researchers analyzed, including scientific journals, major international publications and regional U.S. media. “The most well-read U.S. media are outliers in terms of their negativity,” Molly Cook, a co-author of the study, told me.

About 87 percent of Covid coverage in national U.S. media last year was negative. The share was 51 percent in international media, 53 percent in U.S. regional media and 64 percent in scientific journals.

Sacerdote is careful to emphasize that he does not think journalists usually report falsehoods. The issue is which facts they emphasize. Still, the new study — which the National Bureau of Economic Research has published as a working paper, titled, “Why is all Covid-19 news bad news?” — calls for some self-reflection from those of us in the media.

If we’re constantly telling a negative story, we are not giving our audience the most accurate portrait of reality. We are shading it. We are doing a good job telling you why Covid cases are rising in some places and how the vaccines are imperfect — but not such a good job explaining why cases are falling elsewhere or how the vaccines save lives. Perhaps most important, we are not being clear about which Covid developments are truly alarming.

As Ranjan Sehgal, another co-author, told me, “The media is painting a picture that is a little bit different from what the scientists are saying.”

[Doctor Phibes]

Alternative alternative title "US National News isn't very good".

Now that's objectively true!

[Jolly]

@doctor-phibes said in "Bad news bias":

Alternative alternative title "US National News isn't very good".

Now that's objectively true!

It isn't very good. And hasn't been for quite some time.

Got a solution?

[Catseye3]

Maybe responding to the human proclivity to not only believe the worst, but to relish it -- even as we weep in our beer.

Probably why you don't see many papers with "Good News Gazette" at their masthead.

[Doctor Phibes]

@jolly said in "Bad news bias":

@doctor-phibes said in "Bad news bias":

Alternative alternative title "US National News isn't very good".

Now that's objectively true!

It isn't very good. And hasn't been for quite some time.

Got a solution?

Don't use US National News as your primary source?

Every time somebody watches CNN and then complains about it, they've watched CNN, and increased their viewing figures.

[Loki]

Anything that can engage our amygdala, aka our default mode brain. Survival. The brain is a forward looking computer model, it seeks out what is going to be a threat to the mind and body.

The media has figured out how to predict, dominate and the new horizon is guide your behavior. You have a new master.