RE: COVID-19 is Not as Bad as Media Portrays the Situation...
Totally hear where you are coming from with this but I'm not sure there's any coordinated reasoning behind the doom-and-gloom reporting - other than profits. And you are right the hyper coverage is so out of whack with the actual health impact for many (Italy is a different issue - the average population age plays big into that curve). I think that since 9/11, news media is now in negative news bias focus ... and it's all our (the viewer's) fault. Bad or negative news attracts us and sells more. You are right it could be toned down a bit and contextualized for us but what the hell else is going on out there that we are missing?
The skew towards negative news has huge economic effects as well - ala COVID-19 coverage. That evidence is all around; the markets, hoarders gouging, businesses activating BCP plans, cancelled sporting and social events. It's ALL doom and gloom. It has a huge psychological effect as well. My mental state has me feeling like 9/11 all over again.
News outlets are driven by the performance of their media. Instead of compiling and framing stories with the context they rely on clickbait titles and reactionary images. They also perpetuate myths and do limited fact-checking... there are a few outlets that do well... but the ones that are front and centre hype that media cycle and we all feed into it. That my friend, I think, is the gist of our problem, we just crave negative news.
I've heard some wild conspiracy theories speculating on the real reason behind the media hyping and all the fear mongering, but I'll not go into it nor spread the ideas I've heard until I've got some proper proof of them actually happening. The doom and gloom / fear mongering is certainly in full swing, not really experienced anything like this in my time so far... SARS was bad, but they weren't shutting down schools here locally.
Perhaps we do crave negative news.. Kind of fucked up if you ask me though!
Oh, totally agree - majorly fucked up. I remember SARS too. Was working downtown TO at the time. Not even close to this go around. Even though my son ended up in the hospital with an unknown lung infection, at the tail end of SARS. He was in isolation and we had the Canadian head of infectious diseases come to check him out. Obviously ended up not being SARS (it was some encapsulated pneumonia bacteria) but the timing of it, scared the shit out of us. But like you said - this is sooo totally fucked.
"Keep calm and carry on" <- the ole WWII poster should be resurrected and posted everywhere.