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Bad news

bad news

New Year's Eve in Cologne: In a crowd on the station forecourt in Cologne, there are attacks on women. In the news, men are talking about "North African looks," and it's easy to assume they could be asylum seekers. For days on end, speculative reports appear, social media fiercely debated, sentiment against refugees heated up. A few days later, the Cologne police released the facts: 821 ads were related to offenses on New Year's Eve, 30 suspects were identified, from 25 came from Morocco or Algeria. 15's suspects were asylum seekers.

Only bad news

Welcome to the media madness! "Only bad news is good news" is a motto in journalism. It describes the principle that stories only sell well if they are based on a conflict or a dramatic situation. To stay with the asylum seekers: Since tens of thousands of refugees reached Austria in the past years, negative reports do not stop. IS fighters were introduced in the refugee flows, it was said after the attacks of Paris. Crime is rising, is the basic tenor of many media.
Ulf Küch, head of the Bund deutscher Kriminalbeamter in Lower Saxony, comes to the conclusion in his book "Soko Asylum": "The proportion of criminals who have entered Germany with the refugees is not higher in percentage than the proportion of criminals in Germany Population. "But too many media are not interested in facts, preferring to focus on bad news. The impact on media consumers is hair-raising.

"We received requests to report about burglaries in eastern Austria, because the crime there explode. We looked at the statistics and found out: That's not true. "

"We received requests to report about burglaries in eastern Austria, because crime exploded there," says Heidi Lackner, responsible for the ORF program "Am Schauplatz". "We looked at the statistics and found out: That's not true." In fact, the crime in Vienna in recent years has fallen: in the first half of 2015 there were 22 percent fewer slumps and up to 81 percent (depending on the type of offense) less Crime than last year. Lackner came to the conclusion: "Not the crime has increased, but the subjective threat feeling. Because people read tabloids that are free in the subway, and where burglary, murder, and manslaughter are the only topics. "

perception
"We do not perceive how the world is changing for the better"
The Swedish university professor Hans Rosling developed in the 90er years the so-called ignorance test, which deals with questions about basic global facts such as poverty, life expectancy or income distribution. The test has already been carried out in some countries and the result is mostly similar: the situation on the planet is considered too pessimistic. For example, the average life expectancy worldwide is 70 years, but more than half of the respondents tapped 60 years. Today, the global literacy rate is 80 percent - but only a third of those polled could imagine that. Only seven percent of Americans and 23 percent of Swedes knew that the proportion of the world's population living in extreme poverty has halved since 1990 and has not doubled, as about half believed. In fact, poverty is falling in virtually all countries, as is population growth and child mortality. Life expectancy and literacy rates, on the other hand, are rising. "Most people in the West, however, do not realize how fast and profound the rest of the world is changing," says Rosling, "very often for the better." The rampant pessimism in the West Rosling holds in a mirror interview for "mental laziness, which, because everything goes to hell anyway, absolves it from doing something."

Bad news: Factor tabloid newspapers

The freelance journalist Renate Haiden worked for the Austrian daily for a short time and reports: "The most important thing was the headlines, which editor-in-chief Wolfgang Fellner personally checked. They had to be easy and quick to read, the content of the article did not matter. "Haiden quit the job after a short time, because they felt the cooperation as" not appreciative ". "In the newsroom were especially very young, unskilled employees. I was treated as an apprentice despite my work experience. "
Perhaps it is also due to such circumstances that journalists do not enjoy a good reputation in public: In surveys on the trustworthiness of professional groups, media people regularly end up in the rear seats.

"The most important thing was the headlines, the content of the article did not matter."
Renate Haiden, former editor of the daily newspaper Österreich

Messages draw a wrong picture

An 2015 Forsa survey commissioned by RTL in Germany found that nearly half of the respondents find the daily news too negative: 45 percent of respondents said TV news was "too troubled", 35 percent known, they made TV News Fears 80 Percent Wanted Solutions. Manipulated and negative messages can quickly lead to hopelessness among readers and viewers, to the feeling that they can not change the seemingly bleak situation of the world (see interview). 2.500 Americans were interviewed for a study by the American radio station NPR in collaboration with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health. A quarter of respondents said they had been stressed over the past month, citing the news as the biggest cause.

But the truth is different, as portrayed by many media: Canadians Steven Pinker, an evolutionary psychologist at Harvard University, found that violence has continued to decline throughout history. "All sorts of violence: wars, murders, torture, rape, domestic violence," says Pinker, who also points out that the news is showing the wrong picture. "When you turn on the television news, you only ever hear about things that have happened. You will not hear a reporter say, 'I'm reporting live from a big city where there's no civil war. As long as the rate of violence has not dropped to zero, there will always be enough cruelty to fill the evening news. "
The Swedish university professor Hans Rosling also shows with his ignorance test how negative headlines distort the perception of the world (see infobox).

"What it takes are bright spots, alternatives and new leaders."

Solution-oriented and constructive vs. Bad news

At the beginning of the 1970s, futurologist Robert Jungk was of the opinion that journalists should always report on both sides of the coin. They should reveal grievances, but also present possible solutions. This is also the basis of solution-oriented or constructive journalism, which Ulrik Haagerup, head of the Danish broadcasting department, helped to shape. Haagerup is specifically looking for constructive approaches in his news programs that give people hope. His goal is to depict the entire reality rather than just listing the bad news of the day. "Good journalism means seeing the world with both eyes," said Haagerup. The concept works, the ratings have risen.
"If media focus permanently and exclusively on the problems of this world and on the search for the culprit, our perception of the world only consists of problems, culprits and enemy images," says Doris Rasshofer, former editor-in-chief of the solution-oriented magazine "Bestseller" , "What it takes are bright spots, alternatives and new leaders who focus on solving challenges," concludes the journalist. "And it needs media reporting on it."

Interview with Univ.-Prof. Dr. Jörg Matthes is director of the Institute for Journalism and Communication Science at the University of Vienna
How do negative headlines affect society?
Jörg Matthes: People who often consume negative news rate the general situation regarding crime or terror as more serious and more serious than others. The actual danger situation is overestimated.
Why are so many media focused on negative news?
Matthes: Messages about problems are more newsworthy and are consumed more than positive news. In the course of evolution, we were programmed, as it were, to perceive and weight negative information more than positive, because that ensured our survival.
Surveys say that many people want less negative news.
Matthes: Nevertheless, if you give them as many negative as positive news, these people would focus more on the negative. This is also about supply and demand - it is no coincidence that the Kronen Zeitung is the most widely read newspaper in Austria. So you can not blame the media alone for negative news.
What do you think about solution-oriented journalism?
Matthes: Of course it makes sense to look for a constructive approach to news and not leave the media consumers alone with the problems of our time. However, solution-oriented journalism is time-consuming and needs resources. The population and politicians must therefore be aware that this is not free. Good journalism has its price.

Photo / Video: Shutterstock.

Written by Susanne Wolf

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  1. Great text, thank you. As a journalist, I have felt obliged to "constructive journalism" since I started my profession 30 years ago. At that time the term didn't even exist. Unfortunately, the internet has made bad news worse. People most often click on bad news, delight in the misery in the world, and move on. You can't do anything anyway. The result: resignation, a negative worldview and even more votes for Strache, FPÖ or AfD. Many media such as Perspective Daily, the Riffreporter or the Krautreporter are now showing that things can be done differently.

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