Do you think that negative and positive news are equally represented in the media? My impression is that negative news is present in a much larger number compared to positive news. Why is it important? Because children and adults build their image of the world based on the image of the world presented to them by the media. When the media projects a predominantly negative image of the world, then people begin to think that this world is a negative, corrupt place. The more people are exposed to the media, the more they absorb negative images that impregnate their unconscious.
Evil world syndrome
It is known that the average viewing of television in the adult population is around four hours a day. This means that a large part of the population is exposed to the media "cultivation" of the image of the world. For some of them, it causes the "evil world syndrome" which has a bad effect on mental health, whether people react with fear and depression or react with aggression.
People who clearly recognize their need for a balanced picture of the world feel that the media is to blame because they place too much negativity on us. That is why one can occasionally hear a request for the media to increase the representation of good news. What people don't know is that they themselves are responsible, and therefore "guilty", which is too little positive news. The reason is in the human psyche, which reacts quite differently to negative and positive news. People are much less interested in good news than in bad news. The consequence is that the medium that would publish more positive news would probably fail quickly.
The main reason is that other people's happiness is boring. The fact that someone's child won an international award in mathematics or rhetoric is not very interesting to people. But it is very interesting to their parents. The reason is that for those parents, that child is not someone's, but ours or mine. In order for someone else's happiness to be interesting and exciting for someone, he must be emotionally connected to that person - he must identify with it and consequently experience it as "his" or "ours". This is best seen in sports when our national team plays: "ours" against "theirs". The spectators, that is, the fans, enjoy the game, are proud of the victory, and are depressed after the defeat.Unfortunately, apart from sports, there are not many other occasions in which a larger group of people identified with someone's success.
Another reason is that when there is no identification and emotional connection, then people are either indifferent to other people's success and happiness, or they can even react with unpleasant feelings. Someone else's happiness can remind people that they are unhappy. A typical unpleasant feeling of someone else's success and happiness is envy.
When there is no friendly attitude towards a person who has experienced happiness, success, progress or some joyful event, then people can envy. It simply means that they see their own failure in someone else's success. How do they come to such a conclusion? By comparing themselves to others, and to the extent that he is more successful, they conclude that they are equally unsuccessful. That is how the success of someone else's child becomes the failure of my child. Although perseverance, work and a lot of practice are behind almost every success, it is easiest for people to think that the other was simply lucky, and that they did not have it, and that it is not fair. And then, as a rule, it moves into a campaign to reduce that vertical difference, by dragging others down, through various devaluations.
Negative news provokes a much stronger emotional reaction. As a rule, people identify with the victim of an accident and try to prepare, that is, to learn how not to get into the same situation or, if it happens to them, how to get out of it. Little is known about the fact that unpleasant feelings are almost twice as intense as pleasant ones.
Drama and profit
Evolutionary psychologists warn us that vulnerability situations are much more important than positive situations, because they are related to survival. Evil attracts attention much more strongly than good. And in the structure of every negative news, there is a struggle between evil and good, a drama in which what should not win often wins. Behind the word "media" are various companies that are fighting for profit by attracting our attention. And that is why negative news in the media is emphasized and exaggerated, especially in headlines and announcements. So they poison our image of the world, and thus us.
My opinion is that the media convey what suits them, and I do not believe in the credibility of the media at all!