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This, too, begins with a false premise: that journalists are equally likely to seek out positive and negative stories, and to give both of them equal importance
by rpo3po 11y ago
This, too, begins with a false premise: that journalists are equally likely to seek out positive and negative stories, and to give both of them equal importance. That is a naive assumption, unfortunately, and the facts of reporting - bad events make for good copy - prove it entirely false.
- megablast 11y agoThis is incredibly easy to prove. Count all the good stories that have happened, and all the bad. Compare the ratios to different publications. Of course, it is a lot harder to prove if you are saying something different than the truth.
- popularflea 11y agoWell we know the media never prints libelous stories... Like Duke Lacrosse, Jackie's "rape", "Hands up don't shoot!", ad nauseum. Lol. Everyone has biases. Good reporting ought to address both sides equally. This article doesn't do that - it is shoddy reporting. Regardless, readers always ought to ask, " what are the other possibilities, here? Is this author credible? Which side does this author favor? Is each side being given equal space?" Comments on this article prove that people don't do that, unfortunately.
- wtbob 11y ago> This is incredibly easy to prove. Count all the good stories that have happened, and all the bad. Compare the ratios to different publications. I think that's likely to be a lot more difficult than you think: how does an independent observer know what the count of good and bad events is, rather than the count of good & bad published events? The trouble is that if an event isn't published, it's practically invisible to an observer. This is a related issue to the fact that many sensational crimes are less common today, but perceived to be more common due to over-coverage in the media.
- sp332 11y agoIt's not false, just oversimplified. I swept all that complexity under the word "newsworthy".