Title: If It Bleeds, It Leads: Understanding Fear-Based Media | Psychology Today
Headings: If It Bleeds, It Leads: Understanding Fear-Based Media
Deborah Serani Psy.D.
If It Bleeds, It Leads: Understanding Fear-Based Media
Managing depression requires you to mind your media intake.

Content: If a teaser asks, " What's in your tap water that YOU need to know about ?" a viewer will likely tune in to get the up-to-date information to ensure safety. The success of fear-based news relies on presenting dramatic anecdotes in place of scientific evidence, promoting isolated events as trends, depicting categories of people as dangerous and replacing optimism with fatalistic thinking. News conglomerates who want to achieve this use media logic, by tweaking the rhythm, grammar, and presentation format of news stories to elicit the greatest impact. Did you know that some news stations work with consultants who offer fear-based topics that are pre-scripted, outlined with point-of-view shots, and have experts at-the-ready? This practice is known as stunting or just-add-water reporting. Often, these practices present misleading information and promote anxiety in the viewer. Another pattern in newscasts is that the breaking news story doesn't go beyond a surface level. The need to get-the-story-to-get-the-ratings often causes reporters to bypass thorough fact-checking. As the first story develops to a second level in later reports, the reporter corrects the inaccuracies and missing elements.