The Psychology of The News - A Loss of Nuance
In the last post in this series, we discussed why we pay more attention to, and remember more, negative events. In this post we will explore how this impacts the news media and you.
One theory, for why the news is mostly negative, could be that more negative stories gained more attention; more viewers. And so, overtime, to gain more viewers new companies gradually increased their negative stories. Another theory, is that news companies are aware of the psychology of our negative bias and use it to gain our viewership. Both are likely true across different organisations. It is clear that news organisations consider the psychology of their viewers through certain practices. For example, nearly all news programs now have a moving banner across the bottom with the top headlines, and some have another banner across the side with other news items. This is, ultimately, a manipulation of our attention capacity and certain neurochemistry related to addiction. In any case, either through the evolution of news media, or deliberate manipulation, the result is the same – the news being predominantly negative and, therefore, often depressing.
It is important to remember that viewership, to almost all news organisations, equals money. The more viewers they have, the more they can charge for advertising slots, as those adverts will reach a larger amount of people. However, even the BBC, which does not have advertising space, is prone to work in a way that attracts increased viewership. More viewers, equals increased relevance. Therefore, where as it may be more useful and less conducive to low-mood for news organisations to give their viewers just the basic facts of stories, this does not attract people and it will gain less viewership for doing so. In this way, nuance can often be left out of important news stories. As animals, we are uniquely enticed by stories. Facts alone, are boring. But stories, with twists and plots and good characters and bad characters, are incredibly interesting. News stories that are given to us in such a way – detailing some people as bad, evil, an enemy and some people as good – are more attractive. Yet, they often are manipulated to appear in such a way, to make them more attractive. As even the people writing the news stories are susceptible to such thinking, it is hard to understand how deliberate this is.
It follows that the news outlets that bring the most negative news, in a story-like way with an “evil” character, will gain the most viewers and therefore make the most money. So, is it any wonder that the majority of news organisations are quite obviously biased politically? They portray one side as good and another as evil and, as their viewers absorb what they are given, the absorb these simplistic, unnuanced, ways of seeing people – good or evil. It feeds polarisation, as well as a view of humans which is not representative of humans in general. In fact, if you ever wonder ‘what is wrong with the world?’ ‘How can people be so horrible?’ ‘Why are humans the worst?’ after watching the news, you should consider whether it was the way the news was presented that made you feel that way.
Where does this leave us, the viewing public, mentally and how can we prevent its impact? Find out in the next post.