Don’t Kill the Messenger, Bad News is What the People Crave
PULLMAN, Wash., March 18 (UPI) — The media is regularly criticized for focusing exclusively on negative news — for nonstop coverage of tragedy and controversy. But a new study suggests readers, viewers and buyers are simply getting what they want. The public, scientists say, craves negative press.
Researchers at Washington State University built an algorithm to analyze the new cycle from the perspective of consumer demand. The results showed news consumers, newspaper readers in particular, favor bad news over good.
Media companies feed consumer habits to maximize profits; they’re not delivering anything their customers don’t want, and researchers set out to understand that demand.
Specifically, scientists built a model to predict consumer behavior. Their model was based on the economic principle that the more well-off a person is, the less each successive dollar is worth. Every dollar is worth a lot when a person isn’t sure where their next meal is coming from. But when necessities are covered, the stakes are lowered.
“When you are very poor and hungry, for example, each dollar is worth a lot as it helps you buy enough food to eat,” study author Jill McCluskey, an economist at Washington State, explained in a press release. “But once you have more money and can count on regular meals, it’s the losses that will affect you more. In terms of happiness and well-being, a $1,000 loss will affect you more than a $1,000 windfall.”
This concept translates to news buying in that readers are more likely to focus on stories that inform them about the equivalent of the $1,000 loss. A positive news story may provide clues as to how to secure that next $1,000 windfall, but a negative story is embedded with advice on how to avoid the tragedies in life — and those are what matter most.
Collectively, this phenomenon creates a societal demand for more bad news than good.
“Newspapers act on this demand by reporting more bad news to attract readers and sell more papers,” McCluskey said.
But there is such a thing as too much of a bad thing. An excess of negative press has negative consequences. News overload can inspire depression in viewers and readers, and a focus on negative occurrences can push public opinion away from scientific consensus — as has happened in the debate over genetically modified food.
A string of negative stories can also have long lasting economic effects.
“Even after the E. coli scare was over, people still wouldn’t buy spinach. There can be a lot of impact on growers and wasted food with these scares,” McCluskey added.
The news on bad news was shared this week in the journal Information Economics and Policy.
