Beware of Mainstream Media Too!
In the main text, we learned that people are often misled by fake news on social media.// However, there is another source of information which can be misleading: the mainstream news media.//

　　The mainstream news media is one of the most important sources of information, and we tend to assume that the information it provides is generally reliable.// However, the events and stories you find in the news media are not necessarily selected on neutral ground.//
　　Let’s consider some hypothetical headlines.// If you were an editor, which of the following would be your pick for the top news story?//
　　“Malaria Cases Continue to Gradually Decline”//
　　“A New Virus Variant Is Infecting Millions in India”//
　　“The Weather Report Says We Will Have Mild Weather in October”//

　　Most likely, you would choose the second one.// Why?// Because its news value is greater than the news value of the other two.// If things are going as expected, people don’t pay attention to them.// People are more interested in hearing about something unusual.// As the saying goes, “When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often.// But if a man bites a dog, that is news.”//
　　The greater the news value, the larger the audience, which means more profit for the news media.// And that is why the news media keeps giving us news about natural calamities and tragic events: earthquakes, floods, landslides, plane crashes, acts of terrorism, wars, pandemics.//
　　We need to keep up with what’s going on in the world, but constant exposure to tragic news leads us to a distorted image of the world.//
　　According to Hans Rosling, the author of Factfulness, we tend to perceive the state of the world to be more dangerous than it is.// He attributes this misconception to our instincts, including the “fear instinct.”// In fact, it is this instinct that the news media appeals to in order to get our attention.//
　　Rosling says that natural disasters account for only 0.1 percent of all deaths, plane crashes 0.001 percent, murders 0.7 percent, and acts of terrorism 0.05 percent.// None of these kills more than one percent of the people who die each year, yet they still tend to be reported in the news.// Of course, we should work to reduce these death rates.// At the same time, the data helps to show how much our fear instinct distorts our image of the world.//
　　Getting frightened for no solid reason is absurd.// We need to make sound judgments based on objective data.// Luckily, we have extensive data available for almost everything.// There is no reason why we should not take advantage of this in order to have a more balanced view of the world.//