"People are not generally negative about their own lives ... [but] we are unduly negative about the wider world."
That's the subject of Matthew Taylor's piece on the New Statesman's website.
Public services, families, neighborhoods -- in each case, studies show that we think our own experiences are positive, but assume the bigger picture is much bleaker.
What explains this "perception gap," as Taylor calls it, this "social pessimism"?
Taylor gives this explanation short shrift, but we think it might very well be mass media. That may sound trite, as the media are regularly blamed for all kinds of things. But we're talking bigger than just Dan Rather or the Globe's op-ed page or the pundits at Fox News.
Our outlook on the world is almost literally formed by myriad forces we call "media" -- newspapers, cable, television, radio, Internet...
We’re sure, for example, that our readers have an opinion on Darfur. But how do any of us know the slightest thing about Darfur, what’s going on there, or what should be done about it? The media.
The media are important, especially in countries with the franchise. But we often forget -- individually and certainly collectively -- that what makes a good news story isn't always the truth.
The tension between newsworthiness and truth is one we often overlook. But we do so at the risk of adopting an exaggerated or even distorted world-view. Hence Taylor's "perception gap" between people's real experience and "the news".
Taylor elaborates:
Bad news makes more compelling headlines than good. Tabloids and locals feed off crime stories, middlebrow papers are dismayed at the chaos of the modern world and the alleged venality and ignorance of those in power, and left-leaning broadsheets enjoy telling us that global instability is endemic and environmental apocalypse inevitable. Mean while, the content of television programmes - from dramas to news bulletins - contributes to what the communication theorist George Gerbner called "mean world syndrome": people who regularly watch TV systematically overstate the level of criminality in society.The next time you watch, listen to, or read "the news" try to remember that the truth is often banal, prosaic, and sometimes not even worth mentioning.
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