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.

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News is a money-making industry. One that doesn't always make the goal to report the facts accurately. Gone are the days of tuning in to be informed straightforwardly about local and national issues. In truth, watching the news can be a psychologically risky pursuit, which could undermine your mental and physical health. Fear -based news stories prey on the anxieties we all have and then hold us hostage. Being glued to the television, reading the paper, or surfing the Internet increases ratings and market shares — but it also raises the probability of depression relapse. In previous decades, the journalistic mission was to report the news as it actually happened, with fairness, balance, and integrity. However, capitalistic motives associated with journalism have forced much of today's television news to look to the spectacular, the stirring, and the controversial as news stories. It's no longer a race to break the story first or get the facts right. Instead, it's to acquire good ratings in order to get advertisers, so that profits soar.