By: Paige Fry, Editor-in-Chief

Frequent news watchers have quickly drawn to the conclusion that a majority of the media only advertises negative news. News watchers blame media sources for presenting a world in which negativity explodes like fireworks and blows back all positivity with ease. Audiences quickly point fingers at the news for only supplying their viewers with gloomy ideals, but in reality the audience is the reason why front-page-journalists search for murderous headlines.

“I would have more respect for the news [if it showed more positivity] because right now all the news is looking for is big headers,” says senior Brandon Wills.

While some viewers practically beg for positivity, a study decided to find out how viewers naturally react to different types of news. The experiment tested the click through rates between positive, negative, and neutral news. Positive online news headlines, containing words such as “always” or “best”, received 29% less clicks than news that contained neither a positive nor negative stigma while negative headlines, containing words such as “never” or “worst” received 30% more clicks than neutral news.

These results show that the media cannot be blamed for displaying such a bleak realm. Only writing what their audience wants to read, the media is practically forced to report bad news in order to receive views because the human’s psychological makeup allows negative memories to be more easily remembered and recognized than positive ones. This means that the human brain is hardwired to be more attracted to violent stories than mild ones.

Senior Rainy Adair says, “I think if there were more positive than negative news, people wouldn’t worry as much. Ebola is a big issue, but the coverage of it and the reactions are out of hand.”

The difference of amount between negative and positive news is drastic enough to create a ratio that is seventeen negative stories for every positive one.

Sophomore Kimora Fequiere says, If the media focused more on positive than negative news “everyone would be happier.”

If viewers are searching for something more upbeat in their daily reading there are many publications which only produce positive news every day of the week. Covering stories ranging from high schoolers sleeping in to current US Military goals.

“The only reason why [the media] post so much negative issues is because they write to their audience not for the sake of reporting true information. So, ultimately it’s our fault as a society rather than the news because in order for [the media] to run a good business and make a profit they have to cater their information to us and our preferences are negative,” says sophomore Sam Kibble.

While positive news is sometimes refreshing to hear, completely ignoring negative news is highly unreasonable and would falsely construct a very optimistic outlook on real issues. In a perfect world, the media would have a reasonable mix of positive, negative, and neutral news. The news is still a business that makes money off of their view count; therefore, they will mainly report on what their viewers are naturally drawn to: bad news.