I agree with the insight that a lot of news has a really negative focus. That is, a lot of things like murders or disasters or the like that don’t really have all that much direct impact on the lives of most people are very mediagenic, so get disproportionately-heavy coverage. We wind up with a really skewed-negative perspective in the news media relative to reality.
However, I also have to say that I wasn’t necessarily blown away by some past efforts I’ve seen along the lines of remedying this either – that is, a lot of feel-good stories aren’t necessarily all that important to someone’s life either. Not to say that someone can’t want and consume feel-good stories either, but if one’s goal is to try to pick up useful information, probably what one would best read is neither material about shark attacks, nor about someone who overcame cancer or whatnot.
I agree with the insight that a lot of news has a really negative focus. That is, a lot of things like murders or disasters or the like that don’t really have all that much direct impact on the lives of most people are very mediagenic, so get disproportionately-heavy coverage. We wind up with a really skewed-negative perspective in the news media relative to reality.
However, I also have to say that I wasn’t necessarily blown away by some past efforts I’ve seen along the lines of remedying this either – that is, a lot of feel-good stories aren’t necessarily all that important to someone’s life either. Not to say that someone can’t want and consume feel-good stories either, but if one’s goal is to try to pick up useful information, probably what one would best read is neither material about shark attacks, nor about someone who overcame cancer or whatnot.