This week’s Behind the Headlines comes from political reporter James Walker. To receive the newsletter direct to your inbox every week for free, click here.
IT’S safe to say that the media has a negativity bias.
Bad news dominates headlines and front pages – both physical and online.
In fairness, that negativity is inescapable, even important, at times. Afterall, ours is certainly not a wholly positive world and our job as journalists is, at its most simple, to inform.
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Sometimes, we even seek out the negative – looking to expose wrongdoing and hold the powerful to account.
And not to pass on the blame but audiences, at least if our analytics (oh, and many academic studies too) are to be taken at face value, seem to seek out negative news too.
I see it every day on our website traffic tracker – negative stories invariably lead to more clicks.
It’s not that we at The National don’t cover positive stories. As Scotland’s only daily pro-independence newspaper, we actively try to seek out what is going well across our beautiful country – from inspiring changemakers and sporting triumphs to areas or issues where Scotland is world-leading, including our clean energy potential and wonderful cultural sector.
But even I, as an avid writer and consumer of news, still find myself coming to the end of the month and thinking: bloody hell, the state of the world we live in.
And sometimes I need a reminder that there are a lot of positive developments and stories out there.
Which is why we have decided to create a new free newsletter – Good News Scotland – to do exactly that.
The first Monday of each month, I will be giving you a lovely summary of the previous month’s positive and uplifting stories.
Subscribe here – with the first newsletter popping into your inbox next week with the best stories from 2024.