Journalism: Research paper finds 91% of US news coverage of Covid-19 is negative in nature
Research paper finds 91% of U.S. news reports about Covid-19 are negative in nature, even when there are good news items to report.
Research paper finds 91% of U.S. news reports about Covid-19 are negative in nature, even when there are good news items to report.
While too early to tell, it seems that the 3rd wave of Covid-19 may have peaked, nationally, in the past week. There will continue to be regional growth areas, however, as the entire nation does not peak simultaneously. There is much good news at this point – but as the linked fear porn news item illustrates, the media’s sole purpose is to keep you in a frightened state, scared to step outside. As the new cases curve subsides, the media’s attention will focus on hospitalizations and deaths – numbers which lag the new cases peak by 1-4 weeks, typically – while hiding the new cases curve. This is effectively media propaganda intended to keep you scared.
Blast from the past: the social media propaganda poster that led to the birth of this blog and web site.
Western state Governors are increasingly blaming climate change for western wild fires, as if the wild fires are a single variable. If only we could control the climate, we would no longer have wild land fires. Realistically, there is no magic control knob on climate that we can control and which will reduce fire danger for decades to come.
There are concrete steps that can be taken immediately to reduce the threats of future wild fires – but politicians would rather blame climate change – which they do not control – because to acknowledge there are factors which they can control is to acknowledge that their leadership has failed.
A common mistake people make is to focus on a single variable in a multiple variable problem. In this case, the focus is on one variable that cannot be controlled in the near term, while ignoring other variables that can be controlled.
An actual assault by right wing political supporters on the campaign manager of a Democratic Party rival was misreported as an assault on a senior citizen, probably to increase the emotional appeal of the message.
We all have social media “friends” who spend nearly all of their online time promoting their politics, usually from the stand point of anger and outrage. Their lives appear consumed by anger and outrage to the point that the only thing they have to talk about is how awful politician X is, or political party Y is, or about how we must all support protest Z (and if we don’t agree, then we are Nazis or Marxists).
Do we want to hang out with people who are perpetually angry and outraged? Should we say something to them about how they come across online?
Today is August 17, 2020. Why is CNBC using a chart whose data ends at July 21st – especially since data up through yesterday is readily available?
This claim comes out every year, from the same activist lobbying organization. They use misleading language and obfuscated definitions to imply a conclusion that is not true – a conclusion that the media laps up like good little puppies and uses to make false conclusions. This blog has covered this item twice previously. Nothing has changed.
In the midst of an ineptly managed pandemic and ineptly managed civil unrest and economic fiasco people try to make sense of it by reading everything they can. Scrolling through post and news story after news story is called “doomscrolling” and it destroys your mental health. Sadly, much of the bull shit is not from random social media posts but from actual experts who spew nonsense.
No, the world is not going to end. This a bad headline designed to strike fear in the reader. It’s based on conspiracy theories and people seeking to find arbitrary patterns in randomness. But – time for some media scary headlines!