News Coverage

THE CENTER FOR MEDIA AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS studied network coverage of murder between 1990 and 1995. During that period, the murder rate in the U.S. went down thirteen percent. But during that period, network coverage of murders increased three hundred percent. Danger equals ratings. So murder equals ratings. If you watched the news during that period, you probably got the impression murders in America were escalating out of control when in fact the situation was improving.

Between 1990 and 1996, the number of pregnancies in the United States dropped by 500,000. The most dramatic drop was for teenagers. During the time it was dropping, we got the impression teen pregnancies were increasing. People with something to gain by scaring us, scared us. Those who were trying to convince parents to teach children stricter morals talked about the teen pregnancy "epidemic." Those who wanted to do something about welfare or the school systems trotted out frightening statistics about teen pregnancy. I never heard at the time, "the situation is improving." That doesn't scare anybody and doesn't get ratings. It doesn't compel people to cough up money.

Our brains were not carefully designed. They weren't designed at all. They evolved and are not perfect in any sense of the word. The human brain evolved in a world where it was obviously adaptive to respond to potentially dangerous information with increased alertness. During the millions of years of our evolution, there were no advertisers or evening news programs. We evolved no defense against their negative influence. So we have a built-in reaction to potential danger and the media exploits this natural instinct.

Teams of persistent people scour the world to find the unusual, the shocking, the scary, the things that will compel the viewers' attention and won't let them turn away or change the channel. They gather it all up and pack as much of it into a half hour as they can, giving your brain and nervous system the impression that this is happening in your world, and making you feel more threatened and more helpless than you really are.

Studies have shown that most television news leaves the viewer depressed, because it is primarily bad news the viewer can do nothing about. The problems shown on the screen are too big or too far away or too permanent to do anything about. This sort of news nurtures a pessimistic view of the world.

A research team edited news programs into three categories: Negative, neutral, and upbeat. People were randomly assigned to watch one category of news. The viewers who watched the negative news became more depressed, more anxious about the world in general, and had a greater tendency to exaggerate the magnitude or importance of their own personal worries.

The point of view from which news is presented is similar to the negative view of depressives.

It is a fact that feelings of helplessness and hopelessness cause health problems. And studies have shown that the greater majority of network news is about people with no control over their tragedy. Christopher Peterson, one of the first researchers to show that pessimism negatively effects health, said, "What the evening news is telling you is that bad things happen, they hit at random, and there's nothing you can do about it." That is a formula for pessimism, cynicism, and defeatism — and their inevitable results: unnecessary, unhealthy, unproductive feelings of worry, anxiety, apathy, helplessness, and depression.

In one study of network news, seventy-one percent of the news stories were about people who had very little control over their fate. This is neither an accurate nor a helpful perspective on the world. The way the stories are presented gives the impression that those kinds of events are more common than they really are. Just the fact that something is on television automatically makes it seem more common than it really is. If your world view was based only on what you experienced in your daily life, without any input from the media, you would probably feel that the world was a much less dangerous and hostile place.