The 3 C's of 2022: war, climate catastrophe, corruption!
(The latter applies to Austria at least.)
Journalism does an incredible job of providing us with fact-based and reliable information about world events. However, it is predominantly negative news that we are bombarded with on a daily basis! Is our world really that bad? And is news consumption still good for us?
Exclusively uncovering grievances is much easier than describing additional solutions. And yet many journalists do just that:
In the firm conviction that this is the way to trigger the most consternation and attention, they describe every crisis as drastically as possible. ... But the more drastically and negatively a problem is described, the less committed we are to solving it. ... And so, news after news, fewer and fewer people believe that they have any influence on politics and society.
The journalist and author Ronja von Wurmb-Seibel is committed to constructive journalism, which promotes a different kind of reporting (more on this under Journalistic stories that encourage!).
In her opinion, the well-known credo "Only bad news is good news" is outdated. In her bestseller How we see the world to understand how the media works, how this credo came about and what makes a journalistic story "good"?
The daily error report
... is how Ronja von Wurmb-Seibel describes the news, which is usually selected according to so-called news factors. This means that an event makes it into the media if it
- happens nearby (geographically and culturally)
- is unusual or unprecedented,
- is conflict-laden,
- has far-reaching consequences
- or celebrities.
The journalist questions whether journalism actually succeeds in filtering out the important events from the unimportant ones using these selection criteria and whether it is always useful information that explains world events well. After all, some important developments pass newsrooms by without a trace.
Distorted world view
The result is that we have a very one-sided view of reality. For example, we only hear about the worst events such as war, natural disasters and attacks in faraway countries. According to psychologist Jodie Jackson, our brain hardly distinguishes whether we have experienced an event through the media or in real life. A distorted image of these countries and the realities of life there is created in our minds. We forget that other things happen there too.
As a result, we perceive many global developments worse than statistics would show us. Many of our decisions are based on this (voting behavior, which profession do I choose?) - including the measures taken by decision-makers, which are often unsuitable for solving a problem.
Try it out for yourself
Deaths from natural disasters, suicide rates, people living in poverty. Have these rates fallen or risen in recent decades? The Swedish organization gapminder.org tries to correct our world view with its short questionnaires by presenting the facts and figures.
We need a hero! Do we?
News is also a story! In literature, film and journalism, the so-called hero's journey is a popular and widely used tool for good storytelling.
The hero's journey in a nutshell
An individual who initially knows nothing about their special abilities is confronted with a problem. Strengthened by a mentor, she sets off on a journey to solve this problem. Along the way, the person finds companions with whose help they overcome several obstacles. In the end, however, the person has to face the enemy alone, which they ultimately defeat - usually in a fight. Our heroine emerges as a new, strengthened and transformed person and passes on her experience and wisdom to those around her.
Example from literature: Harry Potter vs. Voldemort
Example from the media: Greta Thunberg vs. Donald Trump
The double standards of the heroine story
This narrative method gives us the impression that it is the responsibility of individuals to solve the major problems of our time (e.g. the climate crisis). The rest of us can only be passive observers.
However, big problems are always solved by many people taking many small steps. It takes social participation, cooperation, protest, social movements, etc. When we hear that hundreds of people are working together to solve a problem, it is no longer the Herculean task of a "superhuman". We experience that our own commitment in a group is firstly effective and secondly feasible. It doesn't always take a fight or conflict to change things for the better.
There is another problem with the heroine principle. The spotlight on individuals causes other participants to disappear into obscurity. Author von Wurmb-Seibel cites the reporting on Donald Trump as a prominent example: not only the actual topic (e.g. migration), but also the growing right-wing milieu, which had been nurtured by many politicians in previous years, was largely ignored.
Added to this is the group paradox within us. When we hear about the fate of individuals (e.g. the escape story of a mother and her children), we make an emotional connection more easily. A specific person in need is more likely to be helped than an entire group in need (wave of refugees). The more people affected by a disaster, the more difficult it is for us to feel empathy and help. We can bear this "inability" in mind when reading the news.
The excitement production machine
... is what political scientist Natascha Strobl calls the news. This is because reporting likes to pick out two opinions or provocative statements that are as opposed to each other as possible, pitting heroes and anti-heroes against each other.
Conflict-laden reporting wins readers, followers, etc. - with great success. The result: a polarized, black-and-white social discourse with entrenched opinions. However, most socio-political issues are too complex and require a differentiated discussion - many shades of gray.
Wrong balance
Journalists generally aim to report on a topic in a balanced way and to shed light on it from several angles. However, because journalism likes to polarize, some pages unfortunately always receive too much attention.
The opinion of climate crisis skeptics has been repeatedly contrasted with the statements of climate scientists.(Nature). We get the impression that the group of skeptics is 1) similarly large and 2) therefore their opinion has as much substance as the statements of the tens of thousands of scientists who warn of the climate crisis. The difference is that the skeptics' opinion is simply wrong and completely lacks scientific substance.
Cranky Uncle alias John Cook, climate communication researcher at Monash University, illustrates false balance like this:
There is talk of a "false balance" in reporting, which must be avoided at all costs. The journalist Jonathan Foster advises this:
If someone says it's raining and someone else says it's dry, it's not your job to quote them both. It's your job to look out the window to find out which is true.
quoted in How we see the world
The focus on short-term events
... it takes longer to end a war than to start one.
Ronja von Wurm-Seibel in her book Wie wir die Welt sehen.
Negative events that make it into the media often happen at a brief, tragic moment (natural disaster, Russian invasion of Ukraine) - a sure-fire headline.
However, positive change does not happen on individual days. It only becomes apparent from statistics or long-term observations and usually causes less of an uproar, which is why it makes it into the media less often.
Breaking news - news that breaks us?
A broad-based study by Oxford University shows that more and more people are actively avoiding news (38% of respondents in 2022, compared to 29% in 2017). Their reasons for this include the fact that news consumption depresses their mood (over a third of those who avoid news) or makes them feel powerless (16% of those who avoid news).
News consumption can even trigger "pre-traumatic stress": We develop stress and anxiety even before bad events occur or even if we most likely never experience them (economic crises, terrorist attacks, illness). It makes relatively little difference whether we only imagine events or actually experience them. We despair, become numb and feel helpless in the face of situations that cannot be changed.
A well-informed society is essential for positive development and solving problems. But what could journalism look like that filters out the relevant events for us and invites us to continue reading, listening, watching and getting involved? Not wellness journalism, but journalism that encourages us? Read it now: Journalistic stories that encourage!
