Every day we receive tons of information from different sources. The ones we trust most come from mass media of course. Reading morning paper while eating breakfast or watching TV during the dinner is a common thing.
So, what is the main news our eye catches? Here is a report on plane crash victims. What else? A serial killer hasn’t been found yet. And for the tenth time we read some horrifying details on how the whole town was swept away with a hurricane.
It seems like there is nothing much to read about. Even the yellow papers give us the most nasty and definitely unnecessary details on celebrities’ personal dramas.
Well, if you take a closer look, there are a lot of positive things worth finding out. Still, for some reason they are not so interesting and do not excite people’s imagination so much. Thus, the balance between good and bad news we consume is far from being even.
The demand determines supply, and mass media do not work for free. On the contrary, some of them are the biggest market players. It is not hard to come to the conclusion that what they let us know is actually what we want to pay for. Media is a very clear mirror for each community’s state of mind.
So, before complaining on how frightening every other newspaper issue is, let us ask ourselves, why do we want to buy them? Not everybody can say it out loud, but I’m sure each one has his own reason.
Psychologists say that hearing about other people’s fails makes us feel better deep inside, because we realize that it all could have happened with us, but didn’t. I think the reasons for such great amount of bad news have very similar origin – human mentality. Until we have that planted on the ground of market relations, bad news will be easy to sell.