Jerusalem Demsas, a staff writer at The Atlantic and host of the podcast Good on Paper, dives into media biases that skew public perception. She discusses the alarming trend of negativity in news reporting, emphasizing that audiences share the blame for sensationalism. Demsas critiques misguided narratives around maternal mortality and highlights how misinformation impacts public trust, especially during crises like COVID-19. Her insights reveal the importance of critical evaluation of news, urging listeners to seek out grounded, factual discourse.
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insights INSIGHT
Negativity Bias
The most important media bias isn't left or right, but negativity and catastrophe.
Audiences share this negativity bias, clicking more on bad news, thus shaping media content.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Fake Fact: Maternal Mortality
Derek Thompson and Jerusalem Demsas believed the widely reported 'fact' of rising U.S. maternal mortality.
Demsas, realizing this fact is untrue, investigated further.
insights INSIGHT
Measurement Error
Maternal mortality data's rise is due to a change in measurement, not an actual increase in deaths.
A 'pregnancy checkbox' on death certificates over-attributes deaths to pregnancy, skewing the data.
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What do most people not understand about the news media? I would say two things. First: The most important bias in news media is not left or right. It’s a bias toward negativity and catastrophe. Second: That while it would be convenient to blame the news media exclusively for this bad-news bias, the truth is that the audience is just about equally to blame. The news has never had better tools for understanding exactly what gets people to click on stories. That means what people see in the news is more responsive than ever to aggregate audience behavior. If you hate the news, what you are hating is in part a collective reflection in the mirror. If you put these two facts together, you get something like this: The most important bias in the news media is the bias that news makers and news audiences share toward negativity and catastrophe. Jerusalem Demsas, a staff writer at The Atlantic and the host of the podcast Good on Paper, joins to discuss a prominent fake fact in the news — and the psychological and media forces that promote fake facts and catastrophic negativity in the press.
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