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The "TV News effect": People tend to focus on negativity and not on positive things

Discussion in 'Chit Chat' started by lemons123, Mar 23, 2016.

  1. lemons123

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    OK, I mean have you noticed how people usually will highlight and spend too much time focusing on negative issues but forget the good ones?

    The motivation to ask this is as...over the last month or so I noticed some friends and also people online criticizing me a lot for "hating" certain things.

    I mean it goes like: "You obviously hate Islam" - yet this same person can tell me instead: "It's cool you like...cars...or cats...or Israel" or anything.

    So it's like the news: just highlighting the problem without even the vaguest plan on how to fix the problem, and also never mentioning anything positive, so what's the point?
     
  2. Connorcode

    Connorcode Guest

    Re: The "TV News effect": People tend to focus on negativity and not on positive thin

    People perceive someone who is negative as intelligent (hence narcissistic bosses), and the same goes for tv news. It has the effect of appearing to be intelligent if it's negative.
     
    #2 Connorcode, Mar 23, 2016
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 23, 2016
  3. edy

    edy
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    Re: The "TV News effect": People tend to focus on negativity and not on positive thin

    are TV news even real? Every time I turn the TV on I want to kill myself. My dad says that the sleazy/brutal news that you normally see on tv are made up so politicians can have so much control over the population (fear)
     
  4. AKTodd

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    Re: The "TV News effect": People tend to focus on negativity and not on positive thin

    The news is real, but modern news, especially cable news, is a business and their aim is to make money - which means advertisers, which means viewers. And viewers will generally be drawn more to negative or high tension news (or newstainment such as people of opposing political persuasions screaming at each other) than to positive or upbeat news.

    There's an old news saying 'If it bleeds, it leads.' Meaning positive news either gets ignored or relegated to a short segment near the end where it gets a brief mention and then everything moves on.

    And of course, is all you ever hear is negative stuff about the world, it will tend to get you down.

    You can find more positive stuff if you look for news from advocacy groups or science and technology sites that talk about new developments in medicine or environmental remediation or suchlike.

    Todd