Why we love bad news

Scroll through any major news outlet and you’ll find negative headline one after the other. Sure, you’ll find a piece of good news or two sprinkled in. But those are the exception to the drudge of negativity we’ve come to expect from the news.

Some argue this goes back to hunter-gatherer days when our ancestors often lived in and out of life or death situations. Maybe the news of the day was, “Lion Roaming Through Nearby Woods.” That’s juicy news worth taking note of. The consumer needed to be aware of the ferocious lion roaming nearby for the sake of their own life.

Today, we still incline our ear to negativity. It remains our preferred underlying thread of what we consume. But instead of dangerous animals or raiding parties coming to pillage our town, it’s gossip, macabre, and political garbage.

I haven’t watched the news since I was in college, but I always found humor in the closing segment. They'd show a 10-second clip of a cute child sent in by a viewer. Or a beautiful sunrise from earlier in the day. 

It was their way of saying, “We realize we just dumped a lot of unneeded garbage on your soul, but here’s something that might make you smile.” But we love it. It’s what keeps readers reading and viewers watching. Rarely do you see someone stop what they’re doing and lean in for a story of unprovoked charity.

Sure, we like to feel warm and fussy, but gossip lands on our ears like a delicacy. And that’s why the news is full of... well, bad news. But this isn’t news at all. The writer of Proverbs understood this thousands of years ago: “The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; they go down to the inmost parts.”