Is the American Media Too Negative About Covid? Is There A Media Bias Towards Negative News? What's the Future of Regional Newspapers? Former Free Press Reporter Mark Snyder Joins To Discuss

The Best Paragraph I've Read: Bruce Sacerdote, an economics professor at Dartmouth College, noticed something last year about the Covid-19 television coverage that he was watching on CNN and PBS. It almost always seemed negative, regardless of what was he seeing in the data or hearing from scientists he knew. When Covid cases were rising in the U.S., the news coverage emphasized the increase. When cases were falling, the coverage instead focused on those places where cases were rising. And when vaccine research began showing positive results, the coverage downplayed it, as far as Sacerdote could tell. But he was not sure whether his perception was correct. To check, he began working with two other researchers, building a database of Covid coverage from every major network, CNN, Fox News, Politico, The New York Times and hundreds of other sources, in the U.S. and overseas. The researchers then analyzed it with a social-science technique that classifies language as positive, neutral or negative. The results showed that Sacerdote’s instinct had been right — and not just because the pandemic has been mostly a grim story. The coverage by U.S. publications with a national audience has been much more negative than coverage by any other source that the researchers analyzed, including scientific journals, major international publications and regional U.S. media. “The most well-read U.S. media are outliers in terms of their negativity,” Molly Cook, a co-author of the study, told me. About 87 percent of Covid coverage in national U.S. media last year was negative. The share was 51 percent in international media, 53 percent in U.S. regional media and 64 percent in scientific journals. Notably, the coverage was negative in both U.S. media outlets with liberal audiences (like MSNBC) and those with conservative audiences (like Fox News). This paragraph comes from the New York Times in an article written by David Leonhardt.  The article is titled: ""Bad New Bias."  You can read the article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/24/briefing/boulder-shooting-george-segal-astrazeneca.html Zac and Don are joined by former Detroit Free Press Journalist Mark Snyder.  They talk about America's media coverage of Covid19.  They talk about the process of how news stories are developed and what can influence them.  They also talk about the future of regional newspapers.   The following story from Politico.com is also referenced: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/11/andrew-cuomo-likable-politicians-475284