Member-only story
The media knows what sells — negativity. Newspapers, social media, and TV broadcasts can smell it in the air like a wild animal, nose upturned to pinpoint the threat.
The coronavirus pandemic and other recent events have sharpened the media’s instincts to a whip-thin edge. They’ve always known the key to a reader’s heart is through emotion, and negative ones grab our attention quicker than others. But as they hone their skills, reporters and bloggers have tapped into the one emotion that is strong enough to overpower our logic and reason.
Fear.
Fear has turned reasonable and smart people into something ugly, and mostly, unrecognizable. We all struggle to gain control of our fear, a powerful emotion that can eat away at our humanity. Fear is an emotion hefted with threats to our safety. It gives people permission to react with primal vigilance to their surroundings, as animals who feel they must destroy so they can live.
The success of fear-based news relies on drama and frames headlines around the adage: if it bleeds, it leads. The fear quotient has soared to new heights, or perhaps more accurately new lows, with the COVID reporting. Fear is in every headline, and it’s changing the way people behave toward one another.
