Distorting Perceptions of Our Lives

I have to go to other countries to feel that carefree travel enjoyment - was just in france Italy and Croatia - and it was great - I don’t understand a lick of French Italian or Croatian - it was grand.

We are now all at risk of believing the world is a bad place where good things sometimes happen rather than a good place where bad things sometimes happen.

Something bad happens anywhere and it quickly shows up on the news. People then start to think it is relevant to their lives, regardless of whether that is true. If we don’t understand the local language, or don’t consume media, our perceptions don’t become so distorted.

Useful news stories are expensive to produce. There is research, writing, taping, production, etc. In contrast, “bleeding” news is quick and cheap. Send one reporter and one camera person to the scene of a car crash or a fire. In fact, I have a friend who “predicts the future”. They say that on tomorrow morning’s TV news broadcast there will be a fire, a car crash, and an assault.

It is even cheaper for a “news program” to buy news from somewhere else. When I lived in Vancouver Canada I would see news stories on Canadian TV about multiple car collisions on a California freeway and a shooting in Florida. Those were not relevant to my life, but it was cheaper for the station to buy those minutes of broadcast time than to produce something relevant to me.

I once lived in a small, safe rural community in northern British Columbia. When cable television came in and people started watching stations like CNN and Fox, they started to become more fearful.