Life is not as bad as we insist on being told it is

The “Fourth Estate” is an appellation Americans give to the media for its role in shedding light on government and informing voters. But we tend to forget that the press is a profit-driven industry, no different than the steel, pharmaceutical or petroleum industries. As with all industries, the media have a profit incentive to deliver what customers want.

And what our behavior demonstrates is that we want bad news.

Plenty of legitimate news sites show only good news, yet we don’t spend much time there. Good News Network is the 10,194th most popular site in the United States; Good Good Good is 45,996th. Instead, we spend our time on sites that bring us “bad” news, like MSN (22nd most popular) and CNN (33rd). The media react by showing us the part of the news that our behavior demonstrates we want to hear.

In consequence, we have developed a warped sense of the world. We believe the world is going to hell when, in fact, life is improving for almost everyone, almost everywhere. A good example was in January with an unusual round of tech layoffs resulting in the loss of more than 50,000 jobs.

The layoffs weren’t lies but only part of the story. Some media didn’t tell us the good news that the number of jobs created in January far exceeded the number of layoffs. Even including the tech layoffs, there were more than 155,000 more jobs in the United States in January than in December.

None of this would be a problem except that we misunderstand the media. We forget that the media is a profit-driven industry. Unfortunately, what is true for politics and politicians applies also to the press. In the end, we get the media we deserve.