Good news over bad ones
Acurator of the annual TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) Conference believes that the unending stream of bad news is itself flawed. Chris Anderson, however, remains optimistic that once we realize we're being brainwashed to believe that things are getting worse than they are, we can, with a little courage, step out into the sunshine,
“Paradoxically, one of the biggest reasons for being optimistic is that there are system flaws in the reported worldview,” Anderson said. He cited as an example the dramatic disasters and terrorist actions that, in his opinion, are significantly over reported while other concerns such as scientific progress and meaningful statistical surveys of the state of the world are significantly underreported.
Anderson observed that we are wired to react more strong- ly to dramatic stories than to abstract facts.
“Spectacle, death and gore, we lap it up. Layer on top of that a media economy driven by competition for attention, and the problem is magnified. Over the years, media owners have proven to their satisfaction that the stories that attract large audiences are the simple human dramas,” Anderson pointed out.
I tend to agree with the curator if I were to consider that the percentage of evening news that we see on television is 90 percent bad news. And since we can access information from cable and network websites, we get an overdose of bothersome news.
In the local scenario, we cannot totally blame the media for reporting all but bad news as our country is besieged with all kinds of negative issues. We can somehow gear our remaining sensitivities to positive things like on the recently concluded Sea Games, where we garnered a lot of medals despite the little support that the athletes get from our government. And even if we are experiencing rainy weather, we can still consider ourselves in a better situation than those in Mexico, Texas and Caribbean countries.
Our legislators are more civilized than the congressmen in other countries who engage in a brawl while in session when they disagree.
We live longer. We are able to communicate with our loved ones abroad face to face. Imported goods are readily available as shipment of these is faster, and more importantly we are healthier because scientific and medical discoveries are quickly disseminated.