Study finds U.S. mass media coverage of Covid-19 is excessively negative (and scary) in tone compared to international media, science media, etc. This twisting everything into scary news is intentional – inducing fear creates more clicks and generates more ad views and return visits to keep appraised of what is happening. The fear mongering is intentional.
This is an Internet/social media phenomena that never occurred to me: “Munchausen by Internet occurs when medically well individuals fake recognized illnesses in virtual environments, such as online support groups.”
This is what happens when we constantly seek out reasons to be perpetually outraged. The world is overrun with individuals who every day, intentionally seek out things to be outraged about. Common speech is now perceived as intentional and hurtful sleight to someone, somewhere. There is nothing we can say anymore without offending someone, somewhere. I have referred to concepts as “brain dead”, which is likely offensive to those with brain injuries. Which, should be obvious by now, includes me.
Study confirms that U.S. news media turns all news, even positive news, into negative spin stories. In this case, a study looked a news reporting of Covid-19 and found that about 90% of U.S. news reports are negative in tone to the point that there were 5.5 times more stories about rising Covid cases – during periods when cases were actually in decline!
Why the bad-news bias? The researchers say they are not sure what explains their findings, but they do have a leading contender: The U.S. media is giving the audience what it wants. — Show Me The Data (@txsalth2o) March 24, 2021
When an organization suffers an embarrassing fiasco of their own making, they often respond with the silly “This is not who we are” claim, just after they’ve demonstrated that this is indeed who they are. This is known as the “Begging the question fallacy”.
Today, a PBS legal counsel was caught advocating for fire bombing the White House and sending children of Trump supporters to re-education camps. PBS has apparently fired the counsel, and made the usual “This is not who we are”, just after their own counsel demonstrated that this might be who they are… begging the question once again.
The ease of posting on social media results in people posting embarrassing, dumb things they will come to later regret.
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.
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?