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Who wants to hear good news anyway?

In reading chapter 1 of IANS I have to say I'm somewhat shocked, but really just disappointed in the news writing world.

As we have argued elsewhere, the media's coverage of AIDS has tended (to reverse the words of songwriter Johnny Mercer) to 'accentuate the negative' and 'eliminate the positive.' As a result, many inherently newsworthy findings about AIDS have not in fact become actual news.
Many people rely on the news to recieve facts, and to get info on what's going on in their world. Especially if it concerns their health or that of their loved ones. So why would we choose to dis-regard a story about the AIDS epidemic? and on top of that one with a positive spin, that could perhaps have lent some modicum of hope to many. It only leads me to question again, just who decides what we should be told? I know it's a very tricky subject. Too much info could lead to mass paranoia and that's never good. But what about the rest of us who want to be informed about what's really going on, the good, the bad, and the ugly?

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Comments (1)

Good way of explaining the idea of panic over numbers. I agree that people only look for and need the numbers to feel that they have learned something, thats the way life is-funny.

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