The BBC earlier this month reported the near-catastrophic results of an experiment by a paper in southern Russia in reporting only good news for a day:The upshot is that the conceit that “journalism is the first draft of history” is poppycock. Journalism is blind to good news.The City Reporter, based in Rostov-on-Don, says it lost two-thirds of its readers after deciding to publish only good news for just one day. “Do you feel like you are surrounded by negative information? You don’t want to read the news in the morning?” the website had asked its readers. “Do you think good news is a myth? We’ll try to prove the opposite tomorrow!” On 1 December, as promised, the website carried only positive headlines. …This is well rooted in human psychology. As Kahneman and Tvirsky demonstrated, people are more than twice as likely to engage in risk-avoidant than opportunity-seeking behavior. People tend toward vigilance toward threats, real and imagined.But as uplifting as they were intended to be, the good news stories sent readership numbers plummeting. “We looked for positives in the day’s news, and we think we found them,” wrote deputy editor Viktoriya Nekrasova on Facebook. “But it looks like almost nobody needs them. That’s the trouble.” The following day, the City Reporter decided to return to more reliable staples: car crashes and burst water pipes.
That is justifiable from the perspective of the business interest of journalism, as this article explicates. But restricting your attention to what is in the business interest of journalists is the furthest thing from objectivity.
Thanks for the ping/post; post. BTTT.