Bad Fact Checking, Negativity Bias and Fake Cancer Cures, the Deteriorating Quality of the News and What It Means To It Readers

Imagine living in the countryside, miles away from a city. You would have no idea of what was going on around you, completely separated from the rest of the world. If you wanted to find out what was going on in the world, you would have to wait weeks until you heard of anything, and even then it might not be reliable. That changed as the news was developed. Information about the world was more readily available, and as global networks developed, so did our awareness of global events. Without the news, the public would still be stuck in those dark ages, the years where no one had any idea of what was happening around us. Scandals such as Watergate would never have been discovered, and the Boston Globe would never have pushed the issue of the sexual abuse of Catholic minors into the limelight. However, even though the news has done a lot of good for us, it has also started to become lax in its coverage, and this has had profound effects on its reader’s. The news has started to appeal to our inner-nature, our nature that is more attracted to violent and extravagant news, to hook readers and sell more copies of their paper. This doesn’t always have large effects on the reader, but it can have an impact on what the readers think can help and harm them, their readers mental state and physical health, and even their positions on certain topics.


The first negative impact extravagant news has on its readers is making them believe fictitious health cures. One large example of these “wonder cures” is cancer. Throughout the years almost everything has been linked to curing, or causing, cancer. Garlic, Wine, Leeks, Broccoli, Kale and even housework have been, by blogs and major newspapers, said to cure cancer. On websites across the internet, news website shout about how, “wine may prevent cancer,”; and “almost all vegetables from the Allium and Cruciferous families completely stopped growth in the various cancers tested.” Since it was in a newspaper, it must be correct, right? However, according to Ben Goldacre, author of Bad Science, a Sunday Times Best Seller, “there are many ways in which journalists can mislead a reader with science: they can cherry-pick the evidence, they can pit hysteria and emotion against cold, bland statements from authority figures.” (Bad Science) According to Ben Goldacre, journalists can, and will, edit and sensationalize headlines and evidence to “pit hysteria and emotion against cold, bland statements” (Bad Science) from scientific leaders. They will take scientific studies with little evidence, and little credibility, and use them to create articles proclaiming a cure to cancer. Now, one may say that these bold statements have no impact on its readers, and that the extravagant claims don’t hurt the news readers, because who believes these articles? Well, the answer is that a lot of people do believe these articles, even if they aren’t rooted in fact. In the same way, their belief in the news and its articles might cause them to act on their belief, turning down chemo in favour of leeks. From there things only get worse and, in most cases, someone’s cancer or ailment gets worse because of these so-called “superfoods.” Now, if they stumbled across the cure in a blog, nothing more might come of it. However, if this patient read about the cure in a newspaper, they might suddenly lose trust in the news. From there things only get worse, and suddenly the world isn’t a nice place to them. Their life might crumble before their eyes, all because of a news article. Although this is the worst case scenario, this could, and probably has, happened to some poor news reader. But, it doesn’t have to happen again.


Think of the last time you went on a news website. Was the news mainly happy or a sad. According to a study by the Media Research Center, more than half, 61%, of the coverage of the Iraq war was negative, and only 15% of articles had a positive slant. Why was all the news negative. Well, it has been proven that humans are attracted to bad news. A study conducted by Outbrain, a company focused in content delivery, found that using negative superlatives in the title attracted 30% more people to the article. Another study by the BBC found the same findings. People were more likely to click on a news article if it is negative. The news makes its articles negative because everyone is more likely to click, or read, news that is negative. The more people click on, or read an article the more money the news companies make. Taking this at face value, it would seem that nothing is wrong with this, everyone needs to make money, no? Well, according to the Cultivation theory “people who are heavy consumers of television, especially news, tend to view the world as more violent and "unsafe" than those who aren’t heavy viewers.” The news likes to report more negative news, and this leads to the people who are “more heavy consumers of television, especially news” believing the world that is portrayed on screen. Now, you may be saying that these people only say the world is negative because that is the way they were raised, and you may be right. However, the adult social group who watches and reads the most news, middle-aged and elderly women, are most likely to test highly for this kind of negative thinking. Now, with this evidence, you may be thinking that because the negative lean of the news has negative impacts on us, everyone should just cut stop watching the news. Although this may create some positive short term benefits, the public's need to be aware of the world around us, or it will suddenly be back in those times without news. Bad things do happen, and everyone's need to know about them but, to limit the negative impact of this the news needs to balance the reporting between good and bad news.


Whenever we, as a human race, don’t know or fully understand a point, they look to those knowledgeable about the topic they are looking into, so these people, can tell us about the topic, and give us stance to start to support. This happens a lot, and one of those knowledgeable people we turn to when we don’t understand a topic is the news. In 1999 two teenage boys when on a rampage in Columbine High School. In the first hour of the attacks it was common knowledge that only one or two people were behind the attacks, but “two hours in, the Trench Coat Mafia were to blame” (Colombine) by the media. Most of those who had witnessed the attacks were not citing the Trench Coat Mafia, but the media still reported it. By the end of the day “the number of students… citing the group went from almost none to nearly all.” (Columbine) If the Trench Coat Mafia weren’t behind the attack, then why was everyone saying they did? Well, as the students who witnessed the attacks got themselves to a T.V, “they ‘knew’ the TCM was involved because witnesses and news anchors had said so on T.V.” The people who are on the news can’t be wrong can they? This is just one example of what can happen when the news repeat a point without properly checking its veracity. It is repeated and repeated until it is fact, and once it is fact it is hard to argue against. Luckily, in Colombine, the misconceptions repeated by the media didn’t have a large impact following the first myths. Although, the early myths repeated by the media are still accepted as fact, it has stopped justice from being served. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. It took the media 7 hours to make the public believe something is true, that wasn’t. Following this, it isn’t hard to believe that because of bad media coverage, coverage that wasn’t properly fact-checked or verified, they have stopped justice from being served. The media need to check their facts, or else, next time there is a large event such as this, reporting from the media might not have such as small impact.

The news media is something that has the power to enlighten and connect the world. Without the media there is no doubt that the global world we take for granted today, would not be the same. However, what started as a great thing has slowly now done harm across the world. Through a mixture of bad fact checking, extravagant titles made to gain money and a negativity bias that changes our perspective of the world, the news has, and will continue to impact its readers negatively, unless something is done. The news needs to fix the errors in its order, to fix the course that has been set. We need the news, we need to understand what is going on in the world, who is behind it, and what can be done to fix it. But, if the news continues to deteriorate as it is right now, the news we read, won’t be what we need.