6 o'clock Oracle

I've been spending time with my mother recently, and that means doing something that I haven't done in some time; watching network television news. My general gripe with the news is that it engages in what seems like a lot of fearmongering, mainly in the service of driving viewership; mildly frightening stories draw in viewers.

But it also gives at least some of those viewers the idea that the world is in terrible shape. My mother's view of the world is fairly dark, as it's beset by violent crime, warfare and ecological disasters on all sides. In short, she no longer sees the stories that are presented on the news as a curated view of local and world events, but as an accurate reflection of the current state of things. Even though, on an intellectual level, she understands that television newscasts are not capable of presenting the whole of current world events with any level of completeness or nuance.

I doubt that the news has enough of an influence on people for the generally negative tone to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, mainly because the actions that people take in response to what they learn from news media rarely rises to the level of something that would catch the interest of the news media. But it can be hard to shake the feeling that the worse people feel about the world, the less likely they are to take actions that will make it feel better to them.