Forever Catastrophe: An Antidote to Media Bias
“What if We’re Already Fighting the Third World War with Russia?” (Glasser, 2022), “How the climate crisis is fueling the spread of a brain-eating amoeba” (Reed 2022), “Was It Wrong for Scientists to Create a Pig-Human Hybrid Embryo?” (Pearl 2017) This type of alarming (and occasionally humorous) headline represents the worst of what we see when scrolling through the feed. Though news is supposed to keep us informed, it’s all-too common that it instead makes us panic; like the world is trending towards profanity and collapse. But is this a new phenomenon? And furthermore, how much of it is really true?
As early as the 90s, political scientist Joseph N. Cappa describes negative media bias, and how it drags on the public: “It is impossible to know which came first — the conflict-driven, sound-bite-oriented discourse of politicians, or the conflict saturated strategy-oriented structure of press coverage. — (but) this mutually reinforcing process creates what we will call a “spiral of cynicism” (Cappa, 1997, pg.10) This so-called “spiral” of public discourse is nothing new, and has existed for at least a few decades. While its talking points often deal in truths, it is also designed to sell fear, distracting from the great deal of progress humanity has made in making the world a better place. In fact, if you were to look at empirical research, you’d find that we are living in an age of unprecedented prosperity.
Wealth is often considered a stand-in for having plenty, and is frequently recognized as one of the greatest indicators, and progenitors, towards national wellbeing. Rich populations tend to be able to afford better education, housing, and live longer lives. While it’s popular to point to poverty as being out of control, if you look at the data, our world is more well-off than it’s ever been. According to data by Clio-Infra — an EU-based repository for historical financial data, global poverty has dramatically decreased since the 1800s.
In 1820, nearly 75% of the world’s population could not afford basic costs of living (CBN line). This includes food, shelter, and basic heating. You’re reading this correctly, nearly three-quarters (756 million) of people in 1820 were starving, homeless, and freezing, and have since been largely forgotten after painful and short lives. Over the next two centuries, these conditions gradually improve. Poverty does tick back upwards, most notably during the Great Depression era (~1920) and around the post-WWII period, but since those periods, this positive trend has only accelerated exponentially. Today, only about 10% of people live in extreme poverty, a fraction of the norm in the early 1800s. The average person of today is truly more well-off than they’ve ever been, and this has only rippled into other aspects and qualities of life.
One such secondary effect of wealth is schooling. The below collection of graphs illustrate a cross-sectional analysis of various countries’ primary education rates since the early 1800s.
This data, collected from UNESCO via World Bank, shows that children enrolled in primary schooling has gradually increased globally over the last two centuries (Figure 2, top-left corner). While this phenomenon occurs earliest for developed countries like the United States and the UK, even in countries like South Africa and Bangladesh, more and more children are being placed in schools, enriching our populations’ minds, and leading to a golden age of rapid scientific and technological advancement.
Among these advancements, are dramatic and sweeping extensions to life itself. According to Our World in Data, Average life expectancy has skyrocketed over the past century.
Not only is the average citizen better able to receive safe and effective treatment for a variety of diseases (many of which have subsequently been wiped out completely), but as our understanding of our biology increases, we are more informed about previously unseen dangers, and how to avoid them. It’s hard to believe that less than a century ago, the world’s average lifespan was below 40, but medical breakthroughs such as the invention of antibiotics, mass adoption of vaccines, and germ theory, have revolutionized the medical field like the world has never seen. Scientific cooperation and inquiry, aided by plentiful global resources and education, has led us to live longer and healthier lives than ever before.
However, as much as it would be nice for me to point at historical data and cheer everyone up, these statistics don’t solve any of the very real problems people face. On the individual level, rent still has to be paid, jobs still have to be worked (or often even found), and the struggle for a better life still affects us all. Housing prices in the US, instance, have skyrocketed. It’s a popular fact, and one that’s also in the data. According to USAFacts, median home price has increased considerably over the last century or so.
Adjusted for inflation, in the early 1960s, it was fairly common to be able to buy a house for just under 200k, but that figure has over doubled in the 2020s, with it often being much higher when you check price listings (USAFacts 2023). This has led to a sentiment where younger generations have “no hope” of buying their own home, often opting instead to live with their parents. As a student, it’s something I’m personally affected by, as it doesn’t make financial sense to spend greatly limited resources on renting. Even one of my colleagues, who is planning on becoming a doctor, is moving back to Texas solely based on housing costs. These are everyday issues we cannot avoid, and aren’t solved by the perspective statistics offer.
Furthermore, some historical metrics, like wage gap and gender inequality, have stood still for the last 20 years. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, data by the U.S. Census Bureau has described a disparity in earnings in the U.S. that, while technically improved over the last century, has stalled in progress.
On a side note, pay gap also tends to vary greatly from country to country. Another dataset from the OECD –a global policy forum that catalogues financial data, found that different countries have widely differing disparities in wages between genders.
Japan has historically had one of the worst gender gaps, whereas others like the United States, still struggle to keep men and women on equal terms. Much of the data trends concerning gender inequality are not entirely conclusive. In some developed countries, it could be argued the pay gap is closing, but in others, the data just looks like noise; suggesting no clear trend in progress being made. In this way, while pay gap isn’t widening, it’s also most certainly still there.
So, between surging housing prices and a struggling pay gap, does this mean pessimism is the safe state of mind to adopt? I personally don’t think this either. I’m showing these things because it’s important to understand the power of perspective. Every generation has had problems, and while some have demonstrably had more prosperity than others, it’s just as true that failing to see the advantages of one’s moment in time will only make the world seem worse than it really is. Being dissatisfied leads people to push for change, but it also makes them unnecessarily miserable. It’s possible to work on building a better tomorrow, while also being grateful for today, and to those who worked for us yesterday. The difference is perspective, and what biases we adopt according to what we’re told.
And often, what we’re told, are stories about impending threats. They obviously sell, or we wouldn’t see them, so why do we continue to be hypnotized by news of decline? In a scientific review of historical journalism trends, Austria’s University of Innsbruck researcher Günther Lengauer and his associates detail that negativity bias may have an evolutionary explanation. He details that “people are genetically wired to pay close attention to negative news and acquire a news-consuming habit to deviant individuals, ideas, and events. To the extent that deviant events represent threats to the status quo.” (Lengauer, 2011, pg.3) In other words, threats to our world are more immediately pressing than good news; a reality that drives both media reporting trends, and our often “wanting” perceptions whenever we try to intuitively assess the state of the world.
In some ways, this wanting is a part of human nature; to never be satisfied with what we have, gives us the motivation to take action, and forever long for a better world. However, while this world does indeed face many challenges in global economics, foreign policy, and political tensions, it is important to take stock of what we have accomplished thus far. The average person is wealthier, smarter, and lives longer than ever before; a reality that should be factored into our perspective when we think about the quality of life we enjoy, as a part of modern society.
