Corona Daily 142: They Love Bad News

In the last twelve months, there have been many occasions when I am back from my morning run, the phone rings, my mother starts telling me how terrible the pandemic is getting in Bombay. Cases have gone up, the state is thinking of another lockdown, five buildings are sealed.

“I’m just back from my run.” I tell my mother. “there were about two thousand people at Shivaji Park, some of them wearing masks - properly. Shops and cafes are open. The market is flooded with people. There are traffic jams, and buses are packed.”

“Now they have found a virus with double mutation.” Mother continues. “Vaccines won’t have any effect on them – they are saying.”

“Well, I’ve told you to stop watching TV.” I tell mother. “I’m telling you about real life, as it exists. You’re telling me about the life the TV channel shows you.”

*****

Bruce Sacerdote, an Economics professor at Dartmouth, noticed that the British media began reporting encouraging progress on covid vaccine developments in February 2020. American media didn’t report those results until April, and with caveats that suggested developing vaccines in 2020 was a pipe dream. The professor wondered if the American mainstream media specialized in giving negative stories about the pandemic.

Along with two other professors, Sacerdote actually conducted a comprehensive study. The group studied over 9.4 million published news stories on Covid-19 since 1 January 2020. They conducted several forms of textual analysis, human and algorithmic, to examine levels of negativity. (The software used Hu-Liu (2004) dictionary of positive and negative words. For example, the phrase ‘clinical trial’ is positive, but ‘death toll’ is negative.)

The study found that 87% stories by US major media outlets are negative in tone versus 50% for non-US major sources, and 64% for scientific journals.

The negativity of the US media stories didn’t change whether the cases were going up or down. When cases went down nationally, the media picked on states and counties where they were rising. The most popular stories watched on CNN or read in the New York Times had high levels of negativity, but the level was particularly high for covid-19.

Surprisingly, the negativity didn’t depend on political leanings. Liberal (MSNBC) and conservative (Fox News) were equally negative.

This could have practical consequences. The school re-opening decision might have been influenced by the level of negativity in the local media.

 The top newspapers in the study included Newsweek, USA today, Politico, New York Times and others. The TV channels (transcripts were analysed) included CNN, CBS, ABC, Fox news, NBC, MSNBC. Science, Nature, the Lancet, The New England Journal of medicine, JAMA represented some of the scientific journals.

Ranjan Sehgal, a co-author of the study said, “The media is painting a picture that is a little bit different from what the scientists are saying.”

*****

It is not that US journalists are producing false stories. They may simply be picking negative stories. One reason, the authors suggest, is that there is consumer demand for negativity. This is seen by our private gossip and social media. Schadenfreude, the German term, describes the feeling of joy at reading or watching others in trouble.

Other countries have dominant channels such as BBC (UK), CBC (Canada), Doordarshan (India) financed by the respective governments. They have no particular reason to cater to consumer demand. USA, among the democratic countries, has the highest level of media competition. They are competing on using negativity as a tool to attract viewers.

In 1987, USA eliminated its “fairness doctrine regulation” that required broadcasters to fairly represent opposing views. Such regulations exist in most other countries.

*****

As part of the research for my daily articles, I read many newspapers and TV websites. My view is that ideology is a key factor that decides the level of negativity. The Economist, for example, is far more positive than the Guardian, though both are British. I personally find Guardian more negative than NYT, though I enjoy reading both.

I don’t have television in my house. I recommend not watching covid-19 news on TV, just as advise my mother not to. That brings a lot of positivity to life.

Ravi