Negative News Media

Since the advent of news media, journalism and its various outlets have been great influencers of public opinion. Newspapers, network and cable news, and online news platforms all have a hand in conveying information to the public. Because they are some of our primary sources of news due to their ease of access, local news media outlets have the potential to shape public perception and discourse. Unfortunately, this power is adulterated by local news media’s quest for ratings, views, and circulation. They often fail to report honestly and, in turn, negatively impact public opinion on certain subjects and people. Sensationalism and selective reporting are a global phenomenon that has negatively impacted the public’s implicit attitudes toward hot button issues and particular groups of people.

The concept of sensationalism and fake news are not contemporary phenomenon. The birth of sensational journalism can be dated back to the 1890’s and the emergence of yellow journalism. In the newspaper wars of the 1890’s, William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, the two owners of the dominant newspaper companies the New York Journal and New York World respectively, fought over control New York’s newspaper market. The power struggle was initiated by a dispute over a popular comic strip featuring the character “Yellow Kid,” hence the name yellow journalism. This dispute quickly evolved into an all-out, profit-driven battle; both men employed underhanded, deceptive tactics to take control of the market. In addition to stealing writers from their rival’s company and physically assaulting venders to control circulation, the two owners published slanderous stories, fabricated information, and used their resources to bring the most compelling, sensational stories to the public. With the rise of these stories came the rise of news media’s influence on public opinion. This culminated to Hearst’s excursion to Cuba to cover the revolt against Spain. Hearst set out with a team of journalists to write stories that would color the Spanish as villains and tug at the heartstrings of his American audience. Heart’s biggest story came when the USS Maine exploded in Havana harbor. Initial reports stated that the explosion occurred on board the ship, however Hearst authorized the publication of false rumors that the Spanish had attacked the ship, augmenting the already present anti-Spanish sentiment among the American public. (“U.S. Diplomacy and Yellow Journalism,” n.d.) Hearst’s less than truthful story lit a fire under the American public and they began demanding that the United States declare war against Spain. Not long after the frenzy generated by Heart’s stories, the Spanish-American War began, a war that is referred to as the first “media war.” (“Yellow Journalism,” n.d.)

Yellow journalism did not cause the Spanish-American War, however the pressure that the government experienced from the public was definitely a result of the many news stories generated by Hearst’s and Pulitzer’s publications. Their insatiable desires for profits and power had brought to light a quality of news media that pervades the industry to this day: sensational, negative media garners views and clicks and, therefore, increases advertising profits. Today, local network news stations rely on advertising as their primary revenue stream; they need to produce content that will get people to watch so that advertisers have an audience to display their products to. In order to reach this end, news stations often run more negative stories and hard news than positive, soft news pieces because these stories attract a larger audience. Negative events are more memorable and produce more potent emotional responses, so negative news stories are more influential than light, fluff pieces. (Stafford, 2014) A social experiment conducted by Russian news website City Reporter explored this media effect by publishing only positive news stories for an entire day. Over the course of the 24-hour period, City Reporter lost two thirds of its normal audience. The dramatic downturn in readership shows us that people are in fact more inclined to consume news if it features negative components. More importantly, this tells us that the negative stories produced by news media have greater potential to reach and influence a wider audience. (Epstein, 2014) It is at this point that the threatening aspects of news media begin to rear their heads.

Sensationalism is dangerous because it can generate false beliefs or negative attitudes toward a group of people, proposed policy, or whatever subject being covered by the news media. This can be seen in a multitude of cases, however before looking at specific cases, one must establish the criteria that must be met and the factors at play in news media that cause it to influence public opinion. There are four main factors that contribute to news media’s ability influential nature. Each factor is not isolated, each component augments the influence of the others, all of them aggregating to one persuasive force. The first element of influence is extended or repeated exposure. (Happer and Philo, 2013) Extended exposure shifts viewpoints by repeatedly exposing the audience to a subject framed in a specific way causing them to eventually associate that view with the specific framing offered by news media outlets. Brief exposure to negative media, given that it isn’t dramatically compelling, which usually is the case, is not enough to shift previously held notions about a subject. This is the second component of news media’s public influence; the level of previous knowledge a person has on a subject is a big factor in whether or not news media will be able to influence their opinion. People typically make decisions and form opinions on policies by evaluating the costs and benefits that policy has for them, their loved ones, and things in which they are involved. Therefore, new information has the potential to influence opinions on policy if the information is “received, understood, clearly relevant to evaluating policies, discrepant with past beliefs, and credible.” (Page, Shapiro, and Dempsey, 1987) If a person has no previous knowledge of a subject or policy, these criteria are easily met and their opinion should shift relatively easily. If a person has been exposed to the issue before, the combination of these criteria being met and extended exposure will better influence that person’s perception of the subject; if only the criteria are met though, this would be a case of brief exposure which, as discussed, has very little chance of altering a person’s opinion out right. Meeting these qualifications can be coupled with the third criteria for media influence which is a person’s personal or emotional distance to a subject. If a person has a personal or emotional investment in the subject being covered they are more likely to be knowledgeable of the subject and have prior knowledge; again, this hinders news media’s ability to alter public opinion. The final factor that contributes to news media’s influential quality is the level of fear or anger generated by the news story. In the case of the New York Journal and the Spanish-American War, the stories generated so much anger and anti-Spanish sentiment that it manifested itself in the form of public pressure on the government to act against Spanish forces. Fear and anger are influential emotions because they often interfere with normal rationality. (Golden, 2016) Couple this destruction of rationality with the influx of misleading information and one can see how news media can influence public opinion.

One of the most obvious cases where many of these factors are present is news media’s framing of certain races and their actions in society. Although, most people will not admit to having a racial bias toward a certain people, our implicit, or underlying, feelings toward certain groups is influenced by news media. A study done by a group at the University of Houston aimed to show that news media contributes to racial bias. (Vollman, 2015)They conducted three experiments involving samples of Americans and Austrians to see if the implicit influence of media existed and extended beyond American borders. The explicit, or conscious, attitudes toward African Americans, in the case of the Americans, and foreign peoples, in the case of the Austrians, was recorded prior to their taking the implicit association test (IAT), a test that would expose implicit attitudes to the same groups. Attitudes toward these groups were being studied because research prior to the experiment suggested that these groups were unfairly represented in the news media of each country. In America, local news overrepresented African Americans as criminals and inflated statistics. Actual crime rates often did not match up with the incarceration and arrest rates reported on local news stations. Austrian tabloid newspapers often depicted foreign peoples as criminals and dangerous characters not to be associated with. 316 American participants were asked how many hours of local news they watched per day and subsequently took the IAT. The study found that those who consumed a greater number of hours of local news per day exhibited stronger negative implicit feelings toward African Americans, regardless of their explicit, or stated, feelings recorded earlier. The 489 Austrian participants went through the same procedure but were asked about tabloid newspaper consumption rather than televised local news media. The results of the Austrian group did not align with the results of the American group; no significant shift in perception of foreign peoples could be found. However, a follow up study was done in which the initial question regarding tabloid newspaper consumption was adjusted. In the ad hoc study Austrian participants were asked how often they read tabloid newspapers and specifically how often they read the articles reporting on crime. This time around, a shift did occur and the results followed the same trend as the American group in the initial examination; those who read more crime articles had more intense negative implicit views of foreign peoples as criminals. This study is important because it shows us that although we may think that we’re not being influenced and our perceptions of the world are how we really feel, news media is actually altering our subconscious and changing our implicit attitudes toward certain groups of people.

How exactly can news media alter our perceptions? What aspects of a news story are able to change our implicit attitudes? A video comparing how news stations talk about white and black protestors make it clear that the relationship between rhetoric and visuals plays a huge role in how the groups are perceived. (Finley, 2015) Although the images associated with both groups are often similar when it comes to the chaos and violence depicted, the rhetoric used to describe the two groups are drastically different. Black protestors are seen as “bad guys,” “wild animals,” “criminals and thugs;” whereas rioting, white sports fans are simply “passionate… young people.” The media fails to cover both groups fairly, often softening their language for white rioters and using exaggerated, unrealistic descriptions for black protestors and their actions. News stations have generated a formula for talking about black and white protests and this formula has been used countless times. Having a basic way of talking about these events makes it easier for news media to over simplify information, incorrectly classify groups, and repeatedly expose the public to a particular perception of black protestors and white rioters. Using this kind of language also generates anger toward blacks and a somewhat accepting attitude toward whites. The production of anger coupled with extended exposure further influences the public’s opinion on each group’s actions during protests and frames them in ways that are detrimental to the development of public opinion.

Another big issue with the way that news media presents their stories is their tendency to selectively omit information to create a more dramatic story. A good example of news media’s proclivity for less than complete stories is their tactics regarding protest coverage. The large majority of protest coverage focuses on the violence associated with the protest. Often, multiple news stations will report on the violence; this contributes to the audience’s believing that the violence is widespread and all the protestors are dangerous. There are two main issues with this. First, the violent protestors often make up an extremely small minority of the total number of protestors present. Recently, a group called Antifa, or anti-fascists, have been dominating protest coverage because of their occasionally violent tactics. (Maza, 2017) Footage of black-clad Antifa members saturated news media and discussion of their violence has been the hot topic during protest coverage. One would think that the Antifa are the ones organizing the protests with all the media coverage that they receive. In reality, Antifa make up an extremely small minority of those protesting. In the case of an anti-Nazi, anti-white supremacy rally in Berkeley, 4,000 people came to protest and a reported 100 Antifa members were present; the Antifa accounted for 2.5% of protestors present yet they absolutely dominated news coverage. This focus on violent protestors by news media is a form of outlier bias, as the Antifa, being only 2.5% of the protestors, are an outlier. News media is attracted to protest violence because it will get more views, not because it is important to the story being told. This fact gets to the second issue which is that the over reporting on violence often overshadows the purpose of the protests. During the protests in Charlottesville, a pastor urged the media to run the “three hours of footage where [they] literally marched through the streets with no violence.” Instead of running that footage, news outlets repeatedly broadcast the violence that accounted for a small portion of the protest’s events. News outlets have the potential to do powerful reporting by covering the protests and their attempt to enact social change, however they squander that potential by reporting with ratings in mind and focusing almost entirely on the minority of violent protestors.

One explanation for why news outlets tend to show the small, violent side of protests is that they are very difficult to cover. Reporters are challenged to quickly gain information about a protest when that protest is often leaderless and generally disorganized. This causes them to go to police officers who are doing press conferences to get a summary of the events that have taken place. (Maza, 2017) Of course, a police officer is going to be more concerned about the violent protestors and will be talking about them in his debrief. Because many reporters are getting the same information about the violent protestors, we have multiple news outlets generating a myriad of reports telling the same story: the protest is wrought with violence and the police are attempting to contain it. Many people watching and reading reports on protests don’t have previous knowledge of how or why the protest was organized so they are dependent on news media for information on the events of the protest. The public is also subject to emotional reactions to this information because the images and rhetoric in protest reports can often be jarring. We again see the news media meeting a few of the criteria that make it a palpable force for public influence.

News media’s tendency to selectively report extends beyond protest coverage. A study done in the United Kingdom examined how mental illness is framed in news media; they found that mental illness was usually associated with violence and many stories held extremely negative representations of those with mental illness. (Happer and Philo, 2013) After their content analysis, the UK based group consulted with mental health experts and those who have personal ties to people with mental illness. All of the experts claimed a minority of people with mental illness exhibit violent tendencies and those who have experience dealing with mental illness within their families adamantly stated that the news misrepresents mental illness to the public. It is clear that previous knowledge and personal ties to the subject not only prevented these people from being influenced by the news media, but also allowed them to point out the dangers of selective reporting and conclude that news media is misguiding public opinion.

Protest coverage, race relations, and mental health reports are just a few subjects where the criteria for public influence are met by news media outlets. The subtle influence of news media extends beyond these subjects and pervades many of the topics of news coverage. In a world where news is increasingly accessible, it is our responsibility to consume news with a skeptical, analytical eye. We must avoid the gradual, negative influence of biased media by consuming news media of multiple outlets, garnering multiple viewpoints in order to form a well-rounded and complete view of a covered subject. We can’t rely on any single news outlet for our information, instead we must be our own reporters and journalists, analyzing situations with our own research and forming beliefs on our own terms.