Today's news is incredibly negatively biased
2023-04-05
I don't know if you notice it, but I certainly have the feeling that when you read any newspaper, watch any news show or visits any news website you inevitably get the feeling that our world is right on the edge of a huge catastrophe or even total distruction and that everything is just getting worse, which is an incredibly negatively biased and honestly just stupid point of view. So, why is it like this and what can we do about it?
Don't get me wrong, the earth is certainly not perfect and many problems with our society as well as human behaviour in general do exist. Especially the climate crises, unnecessary wars and the rise of totalitarian regimes as well as mass surveillance are actual threats to mankind as a whole. However, we should also acknowledge that the focus on negative developments by the news is largely due to their more dramatic character than slow but steady positive developments, which makes it easier to sell, and that by design the most important goal of news outlets is to finance their business and not to show the world how it actually is.
In fact, many things are constantly improving, here are list of just a few aspects. The world has never been better educated or connected, people have never been more healthy, had longer average life expectancy or have been earning more and our society has never developed faster, been more diverse or inclusive. A tornado that destroys a thousand family homes is obviously still terrible, but these events are the exception and not the norm and we should always keep this very important fact in mind.
Far to many people simply stop reading the news altogether to protect themselves from this skewed world view and this is one of the worst things that can happen to our society. In their escape from regular news they either loose the connection to what happens in the world or (and that is even worse) start reading "alternative" news, which quickly lead them to conspiracy theories and therefore have the potential to divide our already fragile society even further.
If you are interested in the field of obtaining a rational view, I can only advice you to read the fantastic book "Factfulness" by Hans Rosling , look at his project Gapminder and look for special "good news only" offerings like " Nur Gutes " from the German "Die Zeit" or " Alles Gute " from "Der Spiegel" to somewhat compensate for the omnipresent negativity.
Hopefully, this short article was able to show you that not everything about today's life is bad (or getting worse) and gave you the impetus to further research in this area yourself. Let me know about your findings in the comments down below...