Without a doubt, the news and media affect people.
Watching the news at night and reading a newspaper or website can broaden horizons. But at the same time, watching the news, which is often populated with stories about violence or natural disasters, can lead to an attitude of negativity.
An aspect people often forget about the news is its reaching ability to bring people, even strangers, together.
In its purest form, the purpose of journalism is to inform the public with accurate and unbiased facts. Journalism academics say the field is essential to maintaining a true democracy, which is arguably correct. Keeping an eye on authority figures (i.e. Nixon in the Watergate scandal) and being a watchdog for Americans is a top priority.
There's always going to be the issue of what many people call the "violent media." Media defenders will say negative news grabs your attention.
Building collapses, natural disasters and sneaky government officials often make the top headlines. People are drawn to shocking, out-of-the-ordinary news, and most "good news," while heartwarming, can seem lackluster in comparison.
The news often presents the real world as a negative place for many people.
It's easy to shrug off every tragedy as just another unavoidable negative happening in the world. While that may be a good policy, we can't dwell on each bad thing that happens; it doesn't mean it's good to be ignorant or unapologetic.
Even if the coverage isn't enlightening, there are positives to the news. Aside from seeming intelligent at a dinner party, news allows us to see the world outside our narrow lives. News makes the world a smaller place by increasing our awareness of what's going on, even in the farthest corner of the planet. Without media coverage, we would be in the absolute dark.
Perhaps the conversation should not be about negative vs. positive aspects of news, but what the news can do for the people. An often forgotten virtue of such widespread media is its ability to bring people together.
Consider the tornado that hit the greater Oklahoma City area on Monday, May 20. Reporters, video camera operators and photographers quickly flooded the area to print and broadcast the disaster to locals, Americans and people all around the globe. Within minutes, websites and news stations had coverage up of the devastation left behind by the tornado.
Sometimes coverage is hard to handle. Seeing the number of lives lost and footage of battered cars and homes reduced to a pile of sticks is never pleasant. The intimacy of the coverage, however difficult to process, is what brings people together under terrible circumstances. It mobilizes people to take action to help raise funds, donate goods or offer support.
At the root of bringing people together is, undoubtedly, empathy. While I'm quite certain I could never fully understand what it's like to go through a tornado until I've personally experienced it, hearing and seeing the stories of others brings the perspective as close as it can get.
While negative news can be a tough pill to take, remember the coverage often rallies nations and the wider world together in support, creating a brief moment of humanity in its most altruistic form.
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