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It has often been said
that “Good news is bad news” because it does not sell newspapers. A radio
station that once decided to present only good news soon found that it had gone
out of business for lack of listeners. Bad news on the other hand is so common
that in order to cope with it, we often simply ignore it. We have become immune
to bad news and the newspapers and radio stations are aware of this.
While newspapers and
TV stations may aim to report world events accurately, be they natural or human
disasters, political events or the horrors of war, it is also true that their
main objective is to sell newspapers and attract listeners and viewers to their
stations. For this reason TV and radio stations attempt to reflect the flavour
of their station by providing news broadcasts tailor made to suit their
listeners’ preferences. Programmes specializing in pop music or TV soap operas
focus more on local news, home issues and up-to-date traffic reports. The more
serious stations and newspapers like to provide “so called” objective news
reports with editorial comment aimed at analyzing the situation.
If it is true,
then, that newspapers and TV stations are tailoring their news to their
readers’ and viewers’ requirements how can they possibly be reporting real
world events in an honest and objective light? Many radio and TV stations do;
in fact, report items of good news but they no longer call this news. They
refer to these as human interest stories and package them in programmes
specializing, for instance, in consumer affairs or local issues. Good news now
comes to us in the form of documentaries the fight against children’s cancer or
AIDS, or the latest developments in the fight to save the planet from
environmental pollution
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