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.
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.