What do you see when you watch the local news on network TV?
Shootings? Stabbings? Subway crime? Robberies? Burglaries?Father rapers? Mother stabbers? And of course throw in a car crash and fire or 2.
Sensationalist stories form 95% of media headlines nowadays.
The media itself often takes advantage of the so-called bad news bias, a practice that does more harm than good.
In fact, the majority (95%) of headlines have been reported as being blown out of proportion to manipulate the readers’ emotions, specially engineered to attract more viewers, readers, liners, or clicks.
It is prevalent for two main reasons.
Firstly, negative news sells. The public has proved to have a bias toward the negative. More often than not, they find positive news boring.
Secondly, negative news statistics show that bad news can catch readers’ attention.
Negative media coverage reports show that negative words such as “bad,” “worst,” and “never” are 30% more effective at catching people’s attention than positive words.
SOoooo…Is it any wonder that CRIME was used as device by successful Republican candidates, especially in NYC suburbs? The fear factor was raised by local news whatever the medium.
In the suburbs, (especially NY) it certainly had an effect. Suburban voters are constantly experiencing messages coming out of New York City news outlets heavily focused on crime.
In this case, they were told very negative things, even though in suburban areas of the city, we are blessed to be some of the safest anywhere and crime rates that are lower than just a few years ago.