What's to be gained by reporting only negative, depressing news stories?

Question

So many people, including myself, are sick of the negativity we read/hear in the news. But why do news agencies continue to focus on the worst? They wouldn't do it unless there was some agenda, goal or benefit. What's the benefit?

Answer 1

I wonder why this same question is asked every day. I'm going to just start copy and pasting this answer.

The answer: People want to read about s*x, money and death. That's what people are interested in, what they want to watch on TV.

Also, I guarantee you that in every newspaper and TV news show, there's positive stories. It's just human nature to focus more on the bad stuff. Please understand, contrary to what these other answers say, that what you hear and read in the media is just a reflection of society. If you want less negativity, work to change society...ignoring the news isn't going to change anything.

Answer 2

There are many agendas, goals and/or benefits depending on who you ask.  Usually, it's ratings, fear, influence, money, and conformity.  I don't remember who said it but "If it bleeds, it leads." continues to hold true.  People may be sick of all the negativity but they continue to watch and not call them on it.  To change it, people would actually have to *do* something.  Plus, it is part of human nature to focus on the negative and not the positive.

Answer 3

I have often wondered this myself and stopped watching the news many years ago.

Murder, drugs, murder, fire, sports, weather, car crash good night

no thanks

Answer 4

The ultimate goal is control...all you hear about is the bad news, right?  So, you hear about every single child abduction, murder, kidnapping, etc, when out of the millions of people in America, the odds of anything like that happening to you are one in thousands...but you still fear, right?  I know I do.  If they can get us to fear something enough, like say, guns - then they can take that fear and try to enforce laws about guns that don't do anything against the real criminal but everything against the law-abiding citizen.  You bet someone has an agenda!  Don't be sucked in by the hype!  Think for yourself!  Form your own opinions, not those of others!  Okay...I feel better now...

Answer 5

The media has lost it's way, it has constitutional responsibility to be a watchdog over our government to help keep it in check, but  once they realized they had power to influence the Gov., they now want to control the government, by influencing the public, to their political and economic ends. All the major media corporations are owned by huge corporate parent companies. They benefit from influencing or controlling the Gov. For example. General Electric owns NBC and it's affiliates, G.E. has been doing a lot of dirty business in the middle east for nearly 30 years, US invading Iraq had the potential to expose their partnerships with many terror organizations, this would be bad publicity, NBC and it's affiliate stations spend all their time bashing the war. Blaming 9/11 on America, things like this NBC is voting Democrat. What all of the media is doing today is practicing what is called "yellow journalism", this is one of the rules they teach you in school you aren't suppose to break if you want to be a legitmate journalist, journalist are suppose to stay neutral and you shouldn't be able to tell who they are voting for.

A phrase I say to my friends often; if the media is our watchdog against corruption in Gov. , who is the watchdog against media corruption. The citizen. But they still get good ratings which means people either believe the carp they are being fed, or find it amusing to watch talking heads lie so blatantly. The best thing that could happen in America would be if everyone would just turn off their TV's, they provide nothing useful or valuable. Maybe then we could actually solve our problems.