Why news is so damn negative

Terms like “doomscrolling,” “headline anxiety” and “headline stress disorder” have emerged in the past two years because of these commonly shared emotions.

War crimes, deaths, and everything negative in between — Are media outlets or consumers’ internet habits to blame? (Credit: Vasilis Caravitis)

Are you one of the many people — and psychologists — who believe the news is increasingly negative?

You’re not just overthinking. Of course, it’s a pretty fucking stressful time. Let’s not forget that. But even before all political hell broke loose, the news felt like a friend who only hit me up to complain about their ex and their shitty job.

Terms like “doomscrolling,” “headline anxiety” and “headline stress disorder” have emerged in the past two years because of these commonly shared emotions. In some cases, people are straight up exhausted and burnt out from media altogether.

There’s a business model behind why media giants might spew out more and more depressing news. Today, I want to dive into practices commonly known among digital professionals, but maybe lesser so with people just trying to stay informed.

We first need to look at what makes media outlets choose the stories they cover.

Website Analytics and the Chicken and the Egg debate

Is news overly negative or are our own clicks to blame?

When newspapers were the top dog, companies looked at how many papers were selling. With broadcast, they relied on Nielsen TV ratings (which was once acquired by door-to-door inquiries or mail-in slips offering a dollar in exchange for your TV habits).

Today, digital media outlets run predominantly on data analytics. This real-time information at their fingertips showcases what users are searching for, what articles they’re clicking on and how long they’re spending looking at certain topics.

Some of this information is private to the company, but certain info is publicly available to anyone who goes looking for it.

If this is your first time hearing of it, don’t worry. The information is typically generalized and does not reveal personal search history. Typically, but that’s a whole different can of nightmares.

Did you click on a story about a mother’s child being bitten by a Pit bull? You, and thousands of others whose morbid curiosity peaked, may have supplied enough reason for an outlet to post another story about it.

Media outlets use our click habits to dictate what types of stories to publish. (Credit: Bastian Riccardi)

This could be another article of a separate dog attack (😭) or what journalists call a “folo.”

When a news outlet posts breaking news story, we might post a folo (short for follow up) when a story gets a lot of clicks or needs more background. However, an outlet likely wouldn’t commit the manpower to writing a folo without the data to support that it will get a good number of clicks.

These pieces typically give more background or offer other perspectives on what happened. In this dog attack scenario, a media outlet might choose to publish interviews from neighbors who knew the dog and its family or maybe a data-driven piece on dog attack numbers across the US. Any other angle would suffice.

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TLDR: if you’re wondering why an outlet needed to publish three separate pieces around a dog attack, their decision may have had something to do with your click history.

To (briefly) go a little deeper, the outlet likely covered the dog attack story in the first place because they have the click data to prove that stories on dog attacks will get opened and read.

I know, I’m sorry. I’m sounding a little victim-blamey here.

Here’s the chain of events:

Media reports story. People click on the story. Media posts similar stories to get more clicks. So… what comes first? The sad stories or the clicks?

We see the cycle, but whose responsibility is it to bring this sad-wagon to a screeching halt? The obvious answer (at least to me) is journalists, but when journalists are hired by for-profit media companies… the solution becomes a little more complicated.

The same sort of methodology can be applied to influencers or even social media journalists (hello, Substack readers) who are trying to determine what subjects keep people coming back ($$$)

Somewhere in time, Steve Bannon realized he commanded attention when he popped veins in his forehead while yelling about politics. If he were to switch to a spiritual lifestyle suddenly, he might lose some paying subscribers. The same with influencers on TikTok and Instagram who might post the same type of content over, and over, and over again.

You get the point, I hope.

You may be wondering: What would journalism look like if it wasn’t dictated by a bottom line (🤑)?

The Associated Press and Reuters, whose non-profit journalism is widely funded by licensing their content to other outlets or by donors, are sort of the golden ponies of journalism. Many legacy outlets and social media reporters rely on them to pull breaking news.

Aside from Trump freaking out over AP refusing to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, AP has typically been in good standing as a bi-partisan source that doesn’t feed into bottomless pits of reporting on stories for clicks.

With that being said, it’s hard enough out there as a news consumer who isn’t equipped with the right media literacy.

I hope this sheds some light on how media outlets make their story choices. It’s not you. Well, maybe it’s you. But I am going to go out on a limb here and say it’s more so the for-profit media biz trying to squeeze out any last bit of attention span they can of us.

Happy reading!