I’m sure most of you are really feeling down about everything that’s going on. Pandemic going to die or lose my job, house, every thing, no hope. Probably for good reason, but how much of what we feel is from the press? And is the press just trying to give us what we want to hear? Doom and gloom gets the ratings, write more until wow the positive there’s hope get better ratings, start writing more positive. Thus things look good. So the question is who leads who? Who is in control?
I would always rather have inconvenient truth than comforting lies.
We are in control of how much information we wish to consume. Once we have enough facts to ascertain that we know what's going on, we can surely fill our time with other activities to balance our lives a bit, for our sanity.
During these times that there really is a lot of bad news, and for some places it's getting better, some not quite yet, but there is still a thread of hope. So, it's up to us how we use the information presented to us, and how much of it we need to see before it takes over our lives.
I think you’ve said it right.
This epidemic is a walk in the park compared to some that were faced by our ancestors. We’ll get through fine.
Media rely very much on what is termed ‘moral panic’.
Discontent, disaster and violence sell advertising space
See the work of Theodore Adorno and the critical theory of The Frankfurt Scholl.
Adorno was a great thinker, and so many of his predictions about "predigested" media and music were utterly spot on.