Principle 27: Media is Biased Towards What Upsets You
It's how they make money
Do I have to convince you that . . .
What’s that? You want to fight me over that statement?!
Yes, we are living in a time when people are whipped up into frenzied outrage pretty much every day. In fact, that’s a feature of media. You know the phrase about the news: “If it bleeds, it leads”?
If you live in a large city where there tends to be a murder every day or so (not because the city is a hellhole, but because in any group of 10 million people, there will always be one person who goes off that day), the local news follows a predictable rhythm:
A story about someone who was killed
A story about someone who was rendered homeless by a fire
A story about someone injured in an accident
First look at the weather!
Why is that the pattern, and has been for decades? Because we are wired to react to upsetting news more strongly than to cheerful news. Part of our ‘fight or flight’ impulse. And advertisers like it that way.
Now there is a man ready to be manipulated into buying the advertisers product!
It’s not just mainstream media, of course. Social media follows a predictable descent into horror:
This is what I had for lunch
This is a good book I enjoyed
Why can’t people be nice to us?
Those people are the problem
Traitors!
Why is this a predictable path? Outrage pushes our buttons faster than that tasty pasta carbonara you had. Pushing buttons gets you more exposure. More exposure gets you more money. And who cares if people get hurt along the way?
The principle here is that this is a media law of nature, and by knowing this, by seeing the pattern before you encounter it, you can brace yourself against the emotional manipulation.
What is news for? To inform you of what is happening in your world. Do you need to know all of the news stories? No. Here is a rough ranking of news stories in the order they typically matter to us:
Your neighborhood street is going to be closed for repairs tomorrow.
There will be a blizzard that will affect your commute.
Some other neighborhood had a fire. How interesting, you were there last month.
A person died in a boating accident 1,000 miles away.
A young, blonde college student went missing on some holiday trip.
Which story gets pushed first? The young, blonde college student. Which story carries the least amount of applicability to you? The young, blonde college student. Oh sure, for her family that is the most important story of all time, and her friends care a lot too. But you? It has no effect on you whatsoever. You do not need to know any detail about it.
You need to know about the blizzard and the road closure, but nobody else across the country cares about that.
So learn to curate your own emotional connection to news. If a story affects you, care about it. If it does not, let it wash over you. It simply does not matter, and if you resist the urge to get outraged, you rob the advertisers of some of their potential success. And you feel better, healthier and more calm.
Remember too, when it comes to social media:
Principle 5: Tools Are Just Tools
When you live a principled life, you observe society being moved this way and that by the idea or meme of the day. One day this country is our friend, the next day the same country is our enemy. What changed? The propaganda (a future principle covers this).
I always liked the quote "We weren't meant to carry the weight of the world on our shoulders" in relation to "news" from around the world. We should be focusing on our local communities more. And yes world news that has a ripple effect on everyone is important to know, but as you say it's not those pieces of information that get prioritised.