We know the saying “If it bleeds it leads.”

What we don’t acknowledge is less bleeding means NO leading.

This is absolutely essential to get our heads around.

So we call rising murder rates “newsworthy.” But doing this obliterates our sense of context. Because we only hear about this one part.

The upticks of the murder rate in 2020 are nothing compared to the 1980s and ’90s. But our brains don’t process the broader context. And we rarely include that in the equation. Everything gets reset to this new context. Rising rates relative to last year must mean anarchy in the streets.

Virtually no journalists acknowledge how they contribute to this.

They offer the news, yes. A bit sensational, yes. But most aren’t directly encouraging the freakout (outside of the Fox Newsisphere).

And yet journalists DO know how our brains work. So the refusal to acknowledge how they frame the story contributes to the problem.

But it is even worse than that.

They also never report on declining rates.

Did you know that we are in the midst of an *unprecedented* decline in murder rates?

The rate has dropped at an unheard of percentage.

Is this a headline pretty much anywhere? Is this the stump speech of literally any politician? Or is this the substance of wall-to-wall coverage on cable news?

No. And we know why. “If it bleeds it leads.”

This is how the public becomes misinformed. Not purely because of partisanship, division, or misanthropes. But because we don’t think context is newsworthy. Not just “good” news or positive, feel-good stories. But genuine, context-establishing news.

Current practice misinforms us.

These words sound alarmist. Or words we associate with crackpots or partisans. But consider what the press’s alarmist preference leads to.

In order to sell papers, the stories told sound the alarm; they don’t calibrate our understanding.

Upticks become problems and downticks are ignored. This is a ratchet. It only goes one way: more.

And I want to say that we don’t do this intentionally, but we do. Just not maliciously. Something closer to ignorantly.

All the more reason we not be ignorant ourselves. And demand the media we consume give us more than what alarms us.