I click on Bing or google or some other news web page and get a lot of bad news that I didn’t want to see … I scan the head line and move on not wanting to know more about that particular problem, but what if you could have the option to have a news feed with no bad news?
I just saw a story about some man that threw his baby away in the Hudson River all I could do is feel sad. I didn’t click on it.
So is it right or wrong to want the good news and not the bad?
“Bad news” depends on perspective. Is “Obamacare repeal passes” good news or bad? What about “Republican Congressman indicted”?
Even if we’re just talking about accidents and deaths, is “Airliner crashes, 45 injured, no fatalities” a good news or bad news? Does it turn into a bad news if it were 1 dead, 193 survivors? How about “Forest fire now under control after killing 3”? Or “Murderer arrested, confesses to 2 additional murders”?
That’s the first thing I thought of. Taken to its extreme, a ban on bad news wouldn’t leave much. You couldn’t report election results or even sports scores, because they’re inevitably bad news for somebody.
But let’s say we’re talking about a “ban” on reports of crimes, accidents, natural disasters, and such, that everyone would agree are bad news and that are remote enough that they’re not going to really affect you personally. I think it might be reasonable to want to avoid all such bad news. For one thing, exposure to such bad news can warp your perception of the world and what its most significant problems and dangers are, due to the Availability Heuristic.
I hate when people, especially the Olds™ on Facebook, who can’t stand the news and wonder why news organizations don’t write more “happy things.”
Sir or madam, this is the world we are living. Some events are good. Others are tragic. This is life. If you want happy things, get off Facebook and watch the Disney channel.
When I don’t want bad news I skip news entirely and look at some comedy.
I can see some logic in filtering out news that’s tragic but you can’t really do anything about. Have an option just have it tell you the important news. I can also see filtering out news from a search because news isn’t what you are interested in. (This has been a problem with me on Google lately: if I google a person or whatever that has been in the news lately, my entire front page can be about that story, even if I’m there for the general topic.)
I can also see having a place where you go specifically for uplifting news, or having social places where news isn’t welcome (say, an option to separate out news into a separate section on your Facebook newsfeed).
But there is nothing gained by actually filtering out all bad news, even that which can affect you. The news can’t act as the fourth branch in keeping people in power accountable if we tune out anything negative. Sometimes we can do something about it–voting, public pressure, boycotts, protect ourselves, talk with others to figure out solutions, etc.
So, really, your question, as asked, is too complicated to pick any of your black-and-white answers.
My answer doesn’t fit the poll.
It’s definitely wrong to avoid all bad news.
It’s OK to want to control when you get the bad news, so it’s not wrong to want that kind of control on what you’re currently looking at.
Even more important is to remember that your feed is never “the news” - it’s some information. Some of it might be news, or not.
Is it OK to ban varieties of news? For example, could I ban all political news? Left, right, center - I don’t want to hear from any of them.
of course your right scr4 :smack:
That plane crash was bad, but the news they all made it out alive was good.
I’ll keep filtering it myself … I live in the Northern California fire zone right now and that is really bad news.
It’s the wrong thing to do. For example, I never want to see another feel good ‘news’ story about a father surprising his child by popping up in an unusual place after he’s returned from military service overseas.
For bad news, I do want to know if there’s been a major terrorist attack. But, I don’t need to know about a case of child abuse 1500 miles away.