For making the worlds people live in fear? I reckon they are.
Land locked newspapers and Internet based news outlets, far too many from both fields to list here but they are\all the same in this regard). They rarely note anything good. 99% of the news from those outlets is bad news. Another murder. Another knife attack. Another beating. Another robbery. Etc, etc, etc. Same sort of news reported day in and day out. None, and I do not include satirical news outlets for obvious reasons, have a 'Good News' or 'Feel good' page or pages or section. Sure, they may now and again, put out some article that is good news but the vast majority of news reported is bad news.
Take the BBC web site at http://www.bbc.co.uk as a prime example. Every single day the report the same bad news. From home and abroad, same old tired format. They split the World up into sections and the U.K is further split up into smaller chunks so you can read more bad news about an area closer to wherever you are! Very thoughtful I am sure.
What is stopping these news outlets from dedicating some space every day to some good news to cheer up their readers? Nothing. Well, nothing except bad news is good news for news outlets as that, they claim, is what their readers want. But, as a reader myself of several of the top online news outlets I can state I would rather read about some good being done somewhere than read about yet another death or fire or plane crash or war or whatever is happening in a given BBC mandated area that is bad.
'Welcome to the Good News only section of the <insert news outlet here>'. Will we ever see something along those lines in any serious news outlet? I doubt it. Are the worlds peoples so downtrodden and nasty that all they want to read about is something bad like someone being killed or an areoplane crash that killed all 203 passengers or yet another country is attacked by the U.S.A. because that country does not conform to what the U.S.A. considers correct? I think not. I think, and this is world over not just in the U.K., that if the news outlets produce a page or complete section relaying only the good things that happen in this world, and there is a lot, then that page or section will quickly become the first page a user goes to.
Our society is bad enough these days without these news outlets reporting on things that make our society seem much worse than it is. I'll ask again. Why can they not set aside some space to report only good news. I bet you that that space will be widely read and will probably get more hits then anything else they report on.
As an aside, my dear old long dead Grandmother always held that the U.K. is no worse now and no more violent than it was in her youth during the 1926-1936 than it is nowadays. The only reason is seems worse is because nowadays news travels much faster, the police are better equipt and that people are more inclined to report crime against themselves or a crime they have witnessed. Was she correct? She had a habit of oversimplifying things in such a manner but if you read the statistics then she was not far wrong.
Land locked newspapers and Internet based news outlets, far too many from both fields to list here but they are\all the same in this regard). They rarely note anything good. 99% of the news from those outlets is bad news. Another murder. Another knife attack. Another beating. Another robbery. Etc, etc, etc. Same sort of news reported day in and day out. None, and I do not include satirical news outlets for obvious reasons, have a 'Good News' or 'Feel good' page or pages or section. Sure, they may now and again, put out some article that is good news but the vast majority of news reported is bad news.
Take the BBC web site at http://www.bbc.co.uk as a prime example. Every single day the report the same bad news. From home and abroad, same old tired format. They split the World up into sections and the U.K is further split up into smaller chunks so you can read more bad news about an area closer to wherever you are! Very thoughtful I am sure.
What is stopping these news outlets from dedicating some space every day to some good news to cheer up their readers? Nothing. Well, nothing except bad news is good news for news outlets as that, they claim, is what their readers want. But, as a reader myself of several of the top online news outlets I can state I would rather read about some good being done somewhere than read about yet another death or fire or plane crash or war or whatever is happening in a given BBC mandated area that is bad.
'Welcome to the Good News only section of the <insert news outlet here>'. Will we ever see something along those lines in any serious news outlet? I doubt it. Are the worlds peoples so downtrodden and nasty that all they want to read about is something bad like someone being killed or an areoplane crash that killed all 203 passengers or yet another country is attacked by the U.S.A. because that country does not conform to what the U.S.A. considers correct? I think not. I think, and this is world over not just in the U.K., that if the news outlets produce a page or complete section relaying only the good things that happen in this world, and there is a lot, then that page or section will quickly become the first page a user goes to.
Our society is bad enough these days without these news outlets reporting on things that make our society seem much worse than it is. I'll ask again. Why can they not set aside some space to report only good news. I bet you that that space will be widely read and will probably get more hits then anything else they report on.
As an aside, my dear old long dead Grandmother always held that the U.K. is no worse now and no more violent than it was in her youth during the 1926-1936 than it is nowadays. The only reason is seems worse is because nowadays news travels much faster, the police are better equipt and that people are more inclined to report crime against themselves or a crime they have witnessed. Was she correct? She had a habit of oversimplifying things in such a manner but if you read the statistics then she was not far wrong.
2 comments:
“Naturally the common people don’t want war. But after all, it is the
leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it’s always a
simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy or a
fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of
the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are
being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and
for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every
country.”
--- Hermann Goering, Hitler’s Reich Marshall, at the Nuremberg
Trials after World War II.
And your quote can be attributed to the U.S.A. at this time in their history. A very very dark time in their history too it must be said.
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