{"id":12741,"date":"2022-08-19T21:59:11","date_gmt":"2022-08-19T21:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socialpanic.org\/?p=12741"},"modified":"2023-03-30T03:21:06","modified_gmt":"2023-03-30T03:21:06","slug":"nber-paper-why-is-all-covid-19-news-bad-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/2022\/08\/19\/nber-paper-why-is-all-covid-19-news-bad-news\/","title":{"rendered":"NBER paper: Why Is All COVID-19 News Bad News?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why Is All COVID-19 News Bad News?<\/strong>
\nBruce Sacerdote, Ranjan Sehgal, and Molly Cook
\nNBER Working Paper No. 28110
\nNovember 2020
\nJEL No. I12,J01<\/p>\n

w28110.pdf (nber.org)<\/a><\/p>\n

\nABSTRACT
\nWe analyze the tone of COVID-19 related English-language news articles written since January
\n1, 2020. Ninety one percent of stories by U.S. major media outlets are negative in tone versus <\/strong>
\nfifty four percent for non-U.S. major sources and sixty five percent for scientific journals<\/strong>. The <\/strong>
\nnegativity of the U.S. major media is notable even in areas with positive scientific developments <\/strong>
\nincluding school re-openings and vaccine trials. Media negativity is unresponsive to changing <\/strong>
\ntrends in new COVID-19 cases or the political leanings of the audience. U.S. major media readers <\/strong>
\nstrongly prefer negative stories about COVID-19, and negative stories in general<\/strong>. Stories of
\nincreasing COVID-19 cases outnumber stories of decreasing cases by a factor of 5.5 even during
\nperiods when new cases are declining. Among U.S. major media outlets, stories discussing
\nPresident Donald Trump and hydroxychloroquine are more numerous than all stories combined
\nthat cover companies and individual researchers working on COVID-19 vaccines<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

The U.S. has a culture of perpetual outrage. People who are outraged all the time seek news to confirm their outrage.<\/p>\n

Similarly, those who suffer from anxiety all the time see news to confirm their anxiety.<\/p>\n

Literally, those of us in the U.S. seek out news that confirms our outrage and anxiety – rather than addressing our outrage and anxiety in a logical and rational manner. The above study notes that news consumers appear to demand negativity.<\/p>\n

With web news, the content producers track everything – and they know that the more negative news they produce, the more clicks they get, as they fulfil the public’s desire to confirm their hysterical fears.<\/p>\n

The basic problem is that news staff are sociopathic – they encourage negative behaviors by reporting day in and day out that “Everything is awful”, “Everything is a crisis”. The news media is grossly irresponsible and seems to employ sociopaths that get kicks out of destroying them mental health of entire populations. The media is beyond worthless – the media it outright harmful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

91% of US news about Covid topics was negative – even when reporting on positive vaccine developments or low case counts in schools. The media learned that consumers demand negativity – I postulate this is because consumers who are suffering from hysteria and anxiety seek out news that confirms their anxiety, and that being anxious is okay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,15,16,29,30,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-culture-of-perpetual-outrage","category-emotion","category-media","category-media-propaganda","category-mental-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12741\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}